Name: Katy Sartain
Hometown: Dade City, Florida
Relationship Status: Single
Year: Senior
Katy Sartain was born and raised in Dade City, Florida where her love for film and television started. “I have always loved film; I was a movie buff when I was little. I would watch the lion king every day for three years and movies just really made me happy,” said Sartain. In middle school, she was able to take a class on news production and learned how to create videos. In high school, she continued making videos, and it was at that moment she knew this was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Here at Florida State, the 21-year-old is making that dream a reality. She is majoring in Digital Media Productions where she gets to hone her film making skills by filming numerous projects on various topics. She is even working on her on own mini-docu-YouTube-series that is scheduled to be out sometime this year called Behind The Crown. “I wanted to pair my love for pageantry and my love for film making and make a mini-docu series about what it’s like to be a local titleholder within the Miss America Organization. I think a lot of time people look at it and just see finals night on T.V when everyone is watching Miss America but really there is so much more going on.”
Sartain, who is currently Miss Orlando 2017, wants people to know that many of these women are college students who are trying to balance school and pageantry, something she herself struggles with. “These women are service minded. They are really taking care of themselves which is hard to do when you’re a college student. I know I struggle with that; balancing school work and fitness. But like I said, these women are doing great things within their communities through platform work, through serving and through community service. So I wanted to show people that. I wanted to have an authentic view of what these women are doing throughout their year and not just on finals night.” She does not have a release date yet for her new series but says to be on the lookout.
After graduating from Florida State with her degree in Digital Media Productions, Sartain plans on becoming a documentary filmmaker. “I want to be a documentary filmmaker because you’re telling other people’s stories and bringing light to an issue that may not have been told without your contribution to the story.” She strongly believes that documentaries have the ability to shake the world and bring about changes to policies. Although she thought about becoming a senator, she realized that through film making, she could change policy through art. Her passion lies within child welfare and she hopes to film documentary about “what it is like to age out of the foster care system.”