Frank G. Caruso is a passionate filmmaker who launched onto the scene with his collaborative, independent film "Going Great White", which Mitch English of "The Daily Buzz" called "multi-level, laugh-out-loud funny!" and which has become an Internet sensation.

Never backing away from challenges and new possibilities, Caruso relies on his passion and inquisitiveness to drive him in choosing the next enterprise he would like to give oxygen to.

Caruso has embarked on a journey of creating an original script, "The Red Umbrella", that has recently been chosen as a semi-finalist in the Writer's Network Screenplay Competition. Adding to his repertoire of screenwriter, actor, producer, director, and most recently lyricist and composer.

Unlike the filmmakers before me, I did not see a film when I was five years old and then dream of becoming a filmmaker. Growing up in Utica, N.Y., I went to the matinees as often as I could. I’d sit and eat five bags of McDonald's french fries which cost all of a buck back then. I smuggled those fries into the Stanley Theater, always waiting to get thrown out by one of the flashlight crazy ushers.

To me, people never made films -- they just appeared from a beam of light onto a two story screen. And there I would sit, like a king on his throne, surrounded by velvet walls, sitting in my velvet chair, listening to those velvet words, entombed in a giant kaleidoscope.

In the summer I turned 13, I was able to buy a used Kodak M22 and two rolls of film. I filmed everything I saw and called my first film “Lives in the Wind," which was a distant and maybe the first of its kind look at people living on the streets -- old and young, Black, white, dismayed and virtuous. They danced, and sang, and ate from the garbage; it was so visceral. I fell in love with film that summer and harnessed a new dream.