Former indie rocker Jared's life has changed since he became a dad. When he runs into his old band mate Vanessa, he should be careful what he wishes for.

The kernel of the idea came the first time my daughter demanded I “really” play hide-and-seek.  Usually I only pretended to shut my eyes. I was used to keeping an eye on her, especially on a large public playground.

It seems small, but deep down it was a confronting, unsettling moment – to willfully close my eyes and shut out the world that had her in it. My mom told me once that parenthood is a series of moments of letting go. When I closed my eyes, that’s what it felt like – a kind of surrender to whatever was next. When I finished counting and opened my eyes, my daughter was nowhere in sight.

Luckily, I found her again, but the moment became an idea I eventually developed into a short script. After a number of accolades – a staged reading (and an all-Asian-American cast) as a finalist at the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival; a finalist in the Hollyshorts Film Festival screenplay contest; a semi-finalist for the Screencraft Short Film Production Fund; and in the Second Round at the Austin Film Festival’s screenplay competition – it’s time to make the movie.

I’m a Washington, D.C.-based indie filmmaker. I made my first short film, "The Goblin Baby," in 2014. It played in film festivals in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, and won multiple awards: Best Narrative Short, Best Sound Design, and Best Visual Effects at the 2015 Indie Capitol Awards, as well as a 2015 Rosebud Award (top 5 film at the Rosebud Film Festival.)

I was lucky to have a fantastic crew for “The Goblin Baby” – most of whom I met through Women and Film & Video DC – and “Hide and Seek” reunites many of us, including producer Robin Noonan-Price, production designer Trystin Francis; first assistant camera Keri Williams, and production assistants Alison Bauer and Kim Tuvin.

According to a report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University, on the top 250 highest-grossing films of 2016, women were just 7% of directors, 13% of writers, and 5% of cinematographers. In an era with so little female representation behind the camera, our crew is mostly female. We are also proud that our cast and crew includes people of color and LGBTQ representation.

“Hide and Seek” is the kind of Twilight Zone-y story-with-a-twist that I love. I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of alternate realities, and it’s fun to play with this concept in the context of being an artist and being a parent. I have three wonderful children myself, so I have long been interested in the choices and trade-offs that people make as they go about choosing to have and raising children, especially people who have artistic pursuits in addition to day jobs.

In our culture, the conversation about balancing work and life seems only to involve women, perpetuating the idea that women are defined first by their relationships. When we see moms depicted onscreen -- if we see them engaged with anything beyond their children -- we usually see them struggling with work-life balance. We almost never see men depicted this way.

In writing the script, I decided to flip what would be the usual gender divide: here the guy has decided to settle down, leave his life as an artist behind, and stay home to raise his kid. The female character is the one who has gone on to become successful as an artist. I’m excited to let this new paradigm play out onscreen, and maybe in a small way contribute to shifting our culture.