Bio

Carlton Saito is a film writer, director and producer who chooses filmmaking as the avenue for expressing how he feels about past and current events and the future of humanity. He was born and raised on the island of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi and has lived here for most of his life, except for one year in Cleveland, Ohio, and three years in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Education

He has been interested in writing since the seventh grade. Even after getting his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, he studied journalism and creative writing and became a freelance writer for about a decade.

Early Career

He moved to Las Vegas in 2000 to try to get official approval for a casino table game called “Tiger Stud” that he had invented. He had a field trial at the Tropicana Casino but ultimately couldn’t get approval.
 
He began by writing big-budget, tentpole type of screenplays because those were the kind of movies that he enjoyed watching. It took a while (like writing four feature scripts) for the realization to sink through his thick skull that no producer will risk blockbuster money on a script from an unknown screenwriter. So he refocused toward low-budget, even micro-budget projects. So far, he has written five feature scripts and more than 40 short scripts.

In 2017, he joined the Hawaii Filmmakers Collective (HFC) and began making short films as writer/director/producer. So far, he has made nine short films, including three as HFC Challenge films. He originated and organized the inaugural Collective Film Festival at the Doris Duke Theatre in November 2024 for HFC. And he recently joined the HFC Leadership Team as the Rentals/Logistics Manager.

Favorite Genre

His favorite genre is fantasy because he loves world building.

Present Day

His concept now is to make anthology-style feature films consisting of a combination of a number of short films.

The theme is to parody or satirize human behavior from the perspective of supernatural creatures - elves, fairies, ghosts, holiday characters, mermaids, talking dogs, vampires, witches and more. This is not horror. No monsters terrorizing innocent humans. Far from it. They deliver karma.

He has applied for three grants to get necessary funding to make one or more of my supernatural-themed short films to submit to film festivals as proof of concepts. If one or more of these short films does well on the film festival circuit, that should justify making the anthology-style feature film.