Hi, my name is Lynna Doan, and I am a multidisciplinary artist working on my journey to creating the stories I want to share with the world.

I grew up in East LA, and the art community that surrounded me during my youth is what has now led me into my passions as an artist and to this project today. I’m currently a first-generation, 2nd-year Art and Global Studies double Major at UCSB, and have been exposed to filmmaking through my involvement with DKA, a cinematic community.

I’ve been creating music since high school, being completely self-taught, and I started expressing my feelings coming of age through songwriting. By meshing all my experiences together, I’ve created this idea that combines my love of art, music, and film, and I hope to connect with others who also feel the confusion of finding who you are.

What is Nineteen?

Logline: A day loaded with expectations to feel happy, loved, and ready for something new, but beneath the candlelight, there's an unshakable emptiness from the weight of stepping into adulthood.

Nineteen is a cinematic piece to accompany a series of songs I’ve developed this past year. It follows a girl on her nineteenth birthday, a year that feels so pivotal but also very overlooked, being one of the first years away from home.

She struggles with a cigarette addiction, which leads her mother to reluctantly give her a vintage lighter, a family heirloom, for her birthday. We follow her as she prepares herself for this “perfect” birthday dinner party, from handwriting letters to setting the candles on the cake. The lighter becomes an object she grabs for frequently, as not only is it practical, but it makes her feel a little closer to home. She hopes all this stress and party planning will be worth it, but overwhelmed by the people at the party and notions of not truly being able to be herself, she feels confined.

The film ultimately reflects the feelings of losing yourself through the weight of stepping into adulthood. This idea was inspired by a song I created last spring, and this song was the catalyst to my realization of needing to accept the change and adapt in a way that is most truly myself, even though I still don’t know who that is. I hope this film and the songs can highlight the small, difficult in-between moments, the ones that break you down, but those are the ones that help you grow.

Inspirations:

K-12 was honestly my first introduction to what it could look like to fully merge film and music into one thing. It made me realize that storytelling doesn’t have boundaries and inspired the structure of this film.

A lot of my songwriting is inspired by artists like Alice Phoebe Lou and Adrianne Lenker, with some of my favorite songs being Hours Were the Birds, Paul, Open My Door and Mind Reader. Their writing has really shaped how I write and how I think about utilizing imagery to express emotion in my lyrics.

Call Me by Your Name has influenced that slow, observational style where everything is kind of sitting and unfolding subtly. It focuses more on internal shifts rather than big external moments, and that’s something I really want to capture in my own storytelling.

Lead Production Crew:

Budget:

Aiming for a total budget of $5,500, my team and I hope to cover the costs of great equipment that will help bring the image to life, as well as aquiring the materials to both create the set and promote the film before, during and after we are done with on-set production.

How you can help:

As a student and young artist, bringing a project like this to life takes a lot of support, and that’s where you come in. Any contribution, no matter how small, goes directly toward making “Nineteen” possible, from equipment and production design to feeding our crew and creating a space where this story can be told with care.

This project is incredibly personal to me, and it represents the beginning of the kind of work I want to keep creating. Even if you’re not able to donate, sharing this campaign or simply talking about it helps more than you know. Thank you for being a part of this process and for helping me bring this story to life.

This GoFundMe is organised by "Nineteen" Producer Sandra Vovk.