To see more films with actors, directors, writers, producers, etc... with disabilities go to
www.disabilityfilmchallenge.org and click on "Watch the Films.”
Actress, Writer - Type 1 Diabetes, Epilepsy
MARLEIGH
A sweet and funny little girl who's serious about her video games and reluctantly counts carbs! More
Actor, Writer, Inventor, Mt Bike Racer - ADD
DYLAN
More than just a great big brother, he helps with diabetes and is in the band Marleigh and Dylan ie.. "MAD" More
Actress, Writer, Director, Producer - RD
ERIN LEIGH
Marleigh's Mom and "Dr. Mom" first and foremost. Animal Crossing enthusiast. Creative polymorph. More
Dad
KEITH
Marleigh's Dad and "Dr. Dad" when it comes to Type 1, songwriter and
coaches Mt. Bike Racing for NICA.
Join Marleigh for one day in her new normal as she adjusts to living with Type 1 Diabetes and doing math...a lot of math!
Everything Has Carbs is a short form docu-dramedy about a girl living with Type 1 Diabetes. This film is based on real-life events but created in two days specifically for the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, a 55-hour film festival that aims to make disability more visible in media and movies in all areas of production both in front of and behind the camera.
About Our Cast:
MARLEIGH is the center of the story and has Type 1 Diabetes (sometimes called Juvenile Diabetes) in real-life, She is 12 now but was diagnosed when she was 8-years old. It was a shock to all of us because we didn't know that we had Type 1 diabetes in our family - it is a genetically inherited disease but can often skip a generation or not present itself at all. No one knows what triggers this auto-immune disorder. Marleigh is a typical little girl and while she doesn't love having Type-1 she loves her family and has a lot of fun.
The rest of Marleigh's family is played by her actual family. Erin is her mom, Keith is her dad and Dylan is her brother. Erin and Dylan are both actors, writers and directors and work on their family web-series called Your Neighbors The Neumeyers with Marleigh. Keith does do some songwriting but prefers to be left out of the movie making. So far neither Erin or Dylan have developed Type 1 Diabetes but they are always keeping on alert for any changes.
Editor, Writer - Spina Bifida
NATALIE
Quick witted and hilarious she brings multiple years of experience with the ESDFC to this film!
Producer, Assistant Director - Epilepsy
BRUNA
Good production instincts under pressure with both logistics and creative ideas. She kept our film on-track. More.
About Our Crew:
NATALIE ZAYAS-BAZAN is a video editor/screenwriter who graduated with a BA in cinema from San Francisco State. she's been involved in the Easterseals competition since 2014, as she was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. she has has been writing since she was a child, and video editing since she did an internship at a local tv station in high school and fell in love with it. she also dabbles as an extra on tv shows like 'dawson's creek', 'one tree hill', 'pitch' and 'speechless'.
BRUNA CABRAL is an award-winning Producer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, based in Los Angeles since 2014. She graduated in Business and Management of Entertainment, Producing and Directing at UCLA Extension. She won the 1st place award as a Producer in a Herbalife Commercial contest in France among more than 300 filmmakers from all over the world. In total she has 14 awards and 22 nominations.
She has a talent for creativity and productivity always ready to contribute to team and project success with a strong ability to work under pressure and keep both staffers and the projects on track allowing all team members to do their best work while ensuring that no element falls by the wayside. Bruna has strong experience with pre and physical production having worked as a Producer and Assistant Director on feature films, short films, commercials, and web series.
Special Thanks
Wanted to share our gratitude to all the people who are so supportive and inspiring to us!
Easterseals & Easterseals Disability Film Challenge
Women In Media
Wonder Women Writers Group
Women & Intersectionality In Moving Pictures
Lindsey Loon, Connect Film Festival
Women in Film
Women in Animation
Ms In The Biz
Brian Pataca & The Actor Operating System
Steve Richard Harris
Commercial Talent
RSA Management
Lori Marks and her son Jonah Marks
Corey Reeder
Robin Fin & Heart Soul Pen Writers Group
Keith Neumeyer
Carrie Aikman
Our Wonderful Families
More about our filming techniques:
Most documentaries are shot over many months and sometimes years, so we ultimately decided that we should re-enact or at the very least stage the moments of Marleigh's day so we could tell you the whole story - or at least as much as would fit in 5 minutes!
We did have to re-enact many of the scenes of this film. For example her Constant Glucose Monitor (CGM) made by Dexcom, only gets changed once every 10-days but we have three shots of that being applied. Same goes for her Insulin Pump made by Omnipod; that's only changed once every 3-days. In those cases we had to do a pretend replacement because I'm sure our audience wouldn't want her to suffer through that multiple times just for the sake of filming, nor the expense - medical gadgets are very costly. Finger pokes on the other hand really do happen often, sometimes 10x a day so we could actually film that.
We shot this project entirely with an iPhone and a DJI motorized gimbal. Sound was recorded with a Rode shotgun mic on a boom pole into a ZOOM H4N4 and edited with Adobe Premiere.