MY DIRECTORIAL DEBUT

This, my directorial debut, was also the most fun I've ever had on any film project. Okay, yeah the shoot days were rough because I was getting tossed around, the pre-production was tense because we had no money, and the editing threw off my circadian rhythm because I was editing nights after working full time during the day and being a full time student in between. But if you see something you like, chances are I can replicate it for you because everything here is a testament to where I've come as a creator. 

RIGHT TIME AND PLACE

It's rarer and rarer that I find the time to go out and enjoy myself. Getting to film the Northwest African American Choir Ensemble was the unexpected yet amazing reminder to actually go out and live a little too! I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all of their performances, and reminded me how much I enjoyed filming these short news features. 

ANOTHER NEW NORMAL

Although this site is me showing off myself, I want to take a second and say thank you. Jeff and Lauren Tinklepaugh showed me Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, easily one of the biggest things in my life, and getting to film a feature about them feels like the best thank you note I could give them. I'm proud to be their student, and I hope to train with them for years to come. 

THIS WAS MY ORIGIN

Every now and then I like to film myself... okay maybe more than just a rare occurence considering half the content on this page features me extremely prominently. Here though, I pay homage to my beginning as part of a class project at the University of Washington. I get to show off my editing skills, and you get to eavesdrop on this conversation with myself. 

STEP ONE, FIND YOUR PASSION

I don't know which I like better; having a camera in my hands or a gi (the uniform for some of those that train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) on my back. This video is more of a showcase piece, where hopefully people think it's good enough that they'll pay me to do both! Filming this type of instructional was a blast, and has left me with so many more ideas and more skills to keep making this type of content. 

ONCE IN A LIFETIME, DO YOU MEET THE EXTRAORDINARY

I was really, really, really lucky that I was introduced to these two. They have a phenomenal story, and an even more prescient cause, and I sincerely believe it was just luck that let me have a camera in my hand as I got to meet them. Our shoot day started at 3am, and ended at 11:00pm, and almost every moment had something worth showcasing in the above video. 

YOU REALLY HAD TO BE THERE...

Have you ever had that moment, when you're trying your hardest to tell a story but no is really understanding all the excitement and wonder in your voice? Even worse, when you end up leaving out the parts that really make that story bananas and you just end up with some monotonous anecdote that just kind of... trails off...? Even at a high school level, a lot of the stories I would run for my publication would leave out so much of what made that story so special to me.  As a result of those stories I let down in my retelling of them, this new series Behind the Story is my way of honoring all the important tidbits that get left out of a project whether a reporter likes it or not. 

INTRODUCING MYSELF

To me, my time in Seattle had been made up of small serendipitous interactions with a whole lot of interesting people. This web series, as a result of all that, is kind of my way of saying thank you to this community that has made my time in the Emerald City so interesting. It's my first project of this type, and hopefully not the last one of its kind. 

TRAINER'S DAY

When I pressed publish on this video, the hair on my spine was standing straight up. When I was sixteen, I had planned out a documentary and watched the plan fall apart because of a single miscommunication. When I was seventeen, I filmed all the b-roll and interviews for a documentary but after going through the footage, I realized it was garbage. I scrapped the video and it's still there on my hard drive taunting me. For five months when I was 18 though, I spent almost every concious moment of my life thinking about this documentary, The Monta Vista Medicine Man. It's only ten minutes, it's geared for a very small market and it's about high school. And it's still something I'm proud about. Hopefully this is the first of many documentaries, and the first of many more video projects.