Meet Lilton Stewart III

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lilton Stewart III. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lilton below.

Lilton, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I feel like a true creative never overcomes imposter syndrome. Instead, I believe you only learn to accept and use it effectively. Imposter syndrome keeps you grounded and level-headed. Knowing that there will always be someone better, more suited, or skilled at doing what you do and understanding that it is okay is how you find true happiness and acceptance of yourself and your abilities. Overcoming imposter syndrome in any other way lets your ego ascend to levels that can cause delusion and become very toxic, leaving you blind to any impeding truths about one’s self, unable to comprehend or accept when you are not the best in the room.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a Writer and Director of narrative films, streaming, and television. I have loved storytelling since I was an only child, needing to entertain myself through my imagination. The world is a crazy place; in my experience, it always has been. So I used to thrive on finding ways to escape it, any chance I could. One of the most exciting things about what I do is that I find stories everywhere my eyes wander. Inspiration for stories can spawn from a song, conversation, or a mural on the side of a random building. The possibilities are endless, and that always keeps me in a creative space.

This has been a journey I never truly knew would ever come to fruition. The day I stopped trying to find my passion in other people’s dreams and focused on my branding and dreams as a filmmaker is the day everything changed for the better. My brand is Lilton Stewart III. I bet on myself and take my wins and losses in stride because they are my own doing. And it’s such a beautiful thing for me to say that finally. I bring passion, focused creativity, and quality efficiency to my career. I have three projects in the pipeline that reflect what I do well. The Burden of Guilt is a claustrophobic drama distributed by Buffalo 8 starring Teala Stampley, Torean Thomas, Rosa Pill, and Mariah Salae. At the end of July, we are shooting my next feature, a horror/slasher called All Things Come To Night, starring Yasha Rayzberg, who is also the co-star in a massive project we have in active development called Oswald: Down The Rabbit Hole, starring Topher Hall as well as the legendary Ernie Hudson.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

As I look back on my journey, the three most impactful qualities would be patience, consistency, and drive. Jumping from the corporate world to the creative one is not for the faint of heart and has more cons than pros, the main con being instant gratification. You must have a high level of patience to endure all the downs that come with a few ups. You also have to be very consistent. It’s hard enough to make things work to your advantage, but it’s even more complicated if you’re not consistently on top of your game.
On top of that, you must have an unwavering drive that propels you on your journey, if you know what I mean. You should never let your fuel get below a quarter tank of gas. It sucks to be on the side of the road to success because you ran out of gas. Based on these three qualities, the best way to develop and improve these abilities is to be kind to yourself. Not to use another car reference, but beating yourself up and expecting to be still able to achieve these abilities is like constantly crashing and destroying your car and still expecting it to drive. Be kind to yourself when the lows come, and appreciate yourself when the highs come.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

This is where we reach the “Duh” moment. The number one obstacle I’m currently facing is finding funding to get projects produced. The film and television industry requires monetary investments to make things happen professionally. From time to time, you get exceptions to the rules where lighting in a bottle was produced for change found under a seat cushion, but for the most part, filmmaking requires a hefty amount of financing. One of the things I’m actively doing to resolve this is writing and producing projects that don’t require a Brinks truck amount of funding, networking and resource sharing with people, and collaborating with like-minded groups using elbow equity to bring visions to life.

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