Elusive Chandelier singer Sia has put pen to paper for a different reason, announcing she is making her own movie starring her young collaborator friend Maddie Ziegler.

The Australian singer has revealed her plans to direct a film she wrote specifically for her dance muse, called Sister, while on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival.

“I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I wanted to make a movie because I thought it would be seen as a vanity project because I was a singer,” Sia said.

• Act it like Beckham: star set for Hollywood
• The best sports documentaries of all time
• Schumer no trainwreck in her first film outing

The Adelaide-native said she felt “a little bit braver” after directing the award-winning video for her hit Chandelier.

Ziegler’s infamous nude-coloured leotard and blunt blonde bob wig in the film clip are now synonymous with Sia’s work and elevated the singer/songwriter to international status.

The 12-year-old continued her creative partnership with Sia, after she danced in the clips for Big Girls Cry and the controversial Elastic Heart video (co-starring Shia LaBeouf).

Maddie Ziegler and Sia attend the Grammys. Photo: Getty

Sia said the film Sister was based on a single-page story treatment she wrote eight years ago.

After getting help with the screenplay from “a guy from a juice bar”, she contacted her friend, children’s author Dallas Clayton, to help beat the script into shape.

“He and I spent three-and-a-half weeks just on a sofa, mapping it out,” she said.

Sia also sought feedback from celebrity pals such as Aussie actor Joel Edgerton, comedian Whitney Cummings and her filmmaker husband Erik Anders Lang, who “gave the best notes, actually”.

Sia compared the creative process to song writing.

“For me, the process was basically, I work out the movie. I’ll act it out, I’ll have the dialogue already in my head,” she said.

Sia’s new movie is the next step in her long career after she transformed from hitmaker-for-hire into a pop sensation.

She has already been linked to the cinema world through her songs for big budget franchises like The Hunger Games, Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, The Great Gatsby and the Annie remake (in which she had a small cameo).