Stack of Random Documentaries from 2003-2023
I was always inspired by motion + sound. Actually my introduction to working with moving-sound (professionally) was in 1998, when I started working for my college’s Media Center. My role was to physically push Television/VCR carts into the classrooms and make sure the professors had proper functioning A/V setups for their lectures. in between delivery of these A/V pushcart systems, (+ for the amount of time it took for a class to occur) , I was able and allowed to experiment with early edit setups - these were VHS -> VHS systems with analog video mixers between the two decks. I became super affluent with the standard VHS edit system, and soon after I was tasked with shooting and editing many films. For instance, my college (which funnily was a jesuit school) hired me to film the “Gathering of the Brothers (male nuns)” and also to make the universities’ Annual Highlight Documentary for the Football team. Right away I discovered that I had more satisfaction from continuously processing and abstracting the footage -> running it thru the video mixer, altering it, and bouncing down to tape, then repeating… and this led me to making experimental 20 second videos, rather than making 20-minute live-action films. Even though I studied math/computer science at college, I was tasked with teaching the communications students how to use the edit machines, and I was eventually the first person in the school to be given access to an AVID system running on a pentium 1 chip. This led me to an internship at Viacom, where i eventually became a senior art director, and then started my first design studio. There I met one of best friends named Dexter, who introduced me to the works of Ross McElwee … who clearly inspired my film making. Documentary was always a part of making motion picture for me - the simplicity of being in a moment + indulging basic sensory perception is always of supreme appeal.