I have been interested in filmmaking my entire life. When I was 12 cousin had a toy called “Digital Blue Video” which was a home video camera that you connected to your computer and made movies off of.
My cousins, brother and I made movies every time we got together for a family function, imaging preposterous things like horror films with commercial breaks, backstreet boys lip-syncing and outrageous cooking shows. It was when my cousin discovered that you could make a frame-by-frame animation in the software by exporting and reimporting photoshopped stills that I realized you could also do stop motion animation.
This led to me becoming fascinated by visual effects. I would go on to using more complicated programs in high school like Final Cut Pro 7 and experimenting with various degrees of a green screen. I’ll never forget my first high school video class. My teacher Mrs. Difazio introduced me to the idea that story always comes first. She went as far as sending me to additional story classes with an NYU professor who was teaching classes at a nonprofit cinema theatre in the town over. She even let me stay in the classroom using the computers late into the night while I taught myself basic compositing.
I think this affected my perception of visual effects at an early age. They should to build out a world you cannot otherwise create, however they should always work in service to the story. Of course, that never stopped me from getting and designing elaborate visual effects only for them to have to be cut out at the last minute… This being a problem I still encounter today.
Going into college at the University of Tampa in 2010 I found myself dealing with a new problem. I was gay and trying to express my coming out process through my art. I developed a film called “Alex and the Imps”. This film took over 4 years to create as I fought tooth and nail to tell a story as I was experiencing it.
I learned After Effects to tell that story., having composited every single shot in some way. The original cut of the film was 20 minutes long but, as the story always comes first, the final cut ended up being condensed significantly. I used that film to apply for NYU Tisch Undergraduate Film and Television in 2012 and transferred there in the summer of 2013. I graduated in 2015 and started working at the film school in the fall of 2016. I have been directing and producing my side projects ever since.
In 2017 I got my feet wet with 3D modeling and have gradually been learning Cinema 4D and Unreal ever since. Now, I am in the process of revisiting that first coming out story as a virtual production musical short film.
My thesis project aims to be a test shoot for this upcoming project.