Representation of transgender and gender non-conforming (T&GNC) identities in media is crucially important - it helps to form self-identity, contextualizes personhood, and cultivates community. However, we as T&GNC people are going to have to create much of this representation for ourselves. We cannot rely on most mainstream media producers and systems for meaningfully accurate or good faith depiction, as has been routinely historically demonstrated. This research-creation thesis thus works to answer the following question: in the context of film, what are non-mainstream transgender and gender non-conforming filmmakers doing to create more reflective, self-generated representations? Specifically, what unique strategies, approaches, techniques, and mobilizations are being employed to tell novel stories about transness and gender-nonconformity? Essentially: what are T&GNC filmmakers doing differently? Garnering data through qualitative interviews and interpreting it through the framework of experiential narrative, this thesis ultimately identifies a series of production and narrative-based strategies and phenomena - including funding issues, narrative incidentalism, commercial disavowal, and a communal shift - as key dynamics informing T&GNC-made film that, taken together, help to illuminate the practices, struggles, and aims of such filmmakers.