I wanted to Direct--but didn't know how...
As you might, or might not know, I began my career as an actor & producer...but always had the aspiration of becoming a director, yet never knew how to get there, so I figured I would parlay a successful acting career into a future opportunity allowing me to direct/learn how to direct--then a global pandemic happened which caused me to pivot into directing, way quicker than I had originally thought…
I lost all my acting work of course and decided it would be the perfect time to learn! So I wrote a feature for several talented actor friends of mine who also were without work and were itching to shoot something--and actually created the characters based on the strengths of the actors I had to speed up my learning curve. I did some small research on cameras and laptop specs feasible to edit, picked up a black magic and gaming lap top and taught myself how to use a camera and edit throughout the course of the film's principal photography which was nearly 2 years in total.
Surprisingly from the beginning, I found out that all of the attention paid to details on set in the beginning of my career, as an actor/producer, translated into a natural ability & confidence to running a set and direct. The feature, regardless of how it turns out was always in my mind my film school--I invested money in all equipment and budget for the film + the countless hours I was watching youtube videos to learn how to do everything and/or problem solve shit I fucked up. Simply because of small bites of content I released on the film's instagram and facebook, I booked over 10 clients the past 2 years as a director and/or editor and really believe the key to all of it was learning how to edit because as I was learning to edit, I began to pick up on really visualizing how it would look in moving picture form after an edit--and of course I learned the limitations of creative shot making and why not to defer to saying on set--"we'll fix it in post."
Today, I’m continuing to grow and cultivate my craft—and one thing I’m really proud of is my willingness to push the boundaries of creativity and challenge myself to do things that I haven’t done before!…more on those instances to come in a future blog!