ABOUT ME

Love can be such a powerful thing. The word gets thrown around a lot more now than it ever has so it's lost a bit of its meaning. I don't throw that word around. When I say it to someone or about something I mean it. I would go as far as to say once I love something I never love the next thing quite as much as I did the first. My first love wasn’t some girl flashing googly eyes from the other side of the lunch line. It wasn’t my first dog who I held at the veterinary clinic as he took his last breaths because the cancer had won. It wasn’t my dad who was dying of kidney disease till this past summer I gave him one of mine. You see these loves are ones you are born with. Nothing wrong with that but the first true love you experience is the one you completely discover on your own. You aren’t taught to love this thing. Instinct, however, takes over and the sensation that can’t be described nor explained yet you completely understand what it is so strong you’re willing to sacrifice your own well-being just to be close to it. That is love. The love you choose can either nurture those helpless feelings of yours or take advantage of them a tremendous risk for the highest of rewards. Film for me is exactly like that. It is the thing I hold so dear and love so much I am willing to sacrifice anything and everything just to be close to it. That includes my own well-being.

            I had to establish my undivining love for this craft in order for you to understand why I care so much. I believe film is such a beautiful and intricate art form. It can be a form of entertainment, but it can also be the most powerful medium to institute change. That is what I am interested in. Don’t get me wrong you have to entertain there is no way around that. No one is going to sit through your bullshit if it isn’t entertaining, but my interest is in making things that are both. I can entertain you but at the same time shine a light to a topic that needs it or give a voice to a group of people that otherwise wouldn't have it. That is what I am interested in. My work can be more compared to things like Honeyboy, Drive, Spotlight, etc. Honeyboy because it was an extremely personal piece of work written in therapy by Shia LeBeouf based on his actual childhood. As an inspiring artist, you can't help but applaud and respect the level of vulnerability it took to write such a film. I plan to be just as vulnerable with my work. Truth is that is the only way people will care about your message. They have to know you have as much personal stake in this as those you are portraying in your film. I plan to do exactly like that. My films will not only be me highlighting an issue in the world it will also be an internal struggle I have which can be from a past trauma or an insecurity whatever that may be I am prepared to bring up all those mixed emotions even if it means hurting myself in the process. For me, if it’s for the sake of art then nothing is off-limits that includes myself. I recently made a film about how I take care of my dad every day as he suffers from kidney disease during an ongoing pandemic. Those to me for whatever reason are so much harder to make. It is my personal life but as artist you don’t have a personal life. That is a luxury you forfeit the moment you decide to do this.  I included Drive because I am an artist first filmmaker and storyteller second. The techniques used in the film Drive for me encompasses the potential in regards to beauty film can highlight. Film to me is the ultimate art form because it takes to account all subgenres of art. You have to deal with lighting, framing, composition, symmetry, color, all the things that makeup art as a whole are dealt with for just one film. Drive embodies all that treating every frame like a stand-alone piece of art. That is the philosophy I will adapt for my work as well. Lastly, I included Spotlight because of the sheer guts you had to have to make something like that. To go after an entire religion especially the most dominant one in the U.S. isn’t easy and neither is the topic. However, the filmmakers thought that something like this had to have a spotlight on it. I am the same way. I don’t mind going after hard topics like religion in fact if it isn’t hard, I am not interested. I don’t look for handouts nor do I care to receive any. Everything I want in life I want it to be earned and anything given I will return. I want to be solely responsible in paving my own path.