Sangria Lift

Melanie Star Scot is an American award-winning film director and producer. In April 2015, she was nominated as "Best Local Filmmaker" in the entertainment magazine "Mountain Xpress". Her first film, "The Box" won several awards, including a Telly award, a Best Actor award in Hollywood for lead actor/co-producer David Topp, a Best Costuming Award and it has been contracted to air on worldwide television on the ShortsHD TV Channel on for three years, all stellar successes for a first time Director.

Since then, she has written, produced and directed "Quitter" and "Sangria Lift" which are both doing well in the film festivals and competitions.

Being a filmmaker was a dream she sought but wasn't sure how to obtain in the small North Carolina town she grew up in. A daughter being raised by a single, working father presented many challenges. Since she was also an only child, Melanie was alone most of the time. She raised herself beginning around age eight, when she declared to her father that she was "much too old for a babysitter". She had a thirst for knowledge and how to do everything on her own. She had to. Her life made her strong, fiercely independent and self-sufficient.

Around the same age of eight, she discovered she had a deep desire to be a part of the film industry. Using sheets and blankets, she would hang curtains around the house, creating her own sound stages. She wrote her own scenes into the most popular films and television shows of that time period and performed alone, in front of her many dogs.

Being on the East Coast, she thought the Hollywood dream was unobtainable. With no one to tell her otherwise, she pursued the "safe" route: college and climbing the corporate ladder. She poured herself into her career. In 2001, she was struck down with two life-altering illnesses which ended her daytime career and she lost everything she had.

At the age of thirty-six, she found herself divorced and a single mom, trying to raise a young son alone. She was broke and extremely sick. It gave them an inseparable bond.

When her son grew up and showed the same interests in film, she vowed to support him in any way that she could and help him obtain his dream, remembering her own from so many years ago. She began by driving him daily to his acting classes forty-five minutes away and because it was so far from home, she spent many hot and cold days and nights, waiting in her car, reading and walking their dog around the school campus.

When her son began to have successes as an actor, because he was a minor, she accompanied him to his film jobs. When she stepped onto her first film set, she says "I felt like a duck that had been raised in a chicken coop and someone had finally found me and thrown me out into the water - where I belonged - and it was euphoric!"

Thus, her film career began. She began taking any jobs she could on as many film sets as she could, working for free in order to gain the experience she wanted and understand how a film set operated. She did everything from craft services, wardrobe, horse wrangling, boom operator, slate girl, production assistant, camera assistant and script supervisor.

In 2012, she co-founded her own production company, Topp Scot Productions. After "The Box", she wrote and produced Quitter (2014) and Sangria Lift (2015) . In 2014, she became a Producer on the dramatic and successful short film, Our Father (2014) starring Michael Gross

She is working on her own feature length films, "Dancing in the Dark" and "Phoenix 454" slated for 2017 and 2018

Although she produced and directed her first film at the age of 49, she shows no signs of slowing down, in fact the opposite seems true.