From a young age I have always viewed myself as an entertainer. I remember countless times when we had a sitter over, where my sister and I would move all the furniture out of the living room to open it up while my parents were gone. I would put on my favorite music and dance across the floor, sliding, jumping, spinning and throwing my air guitar around; performing moves that were dangerous and exciting when being an 8-year-old. All I wanted to do was put on a show for someone. To display what I could do and amaze them.
A year or so later I started building Legos, which quickly became a huge passion of mine and some of the sets still reside in my basement at my parents house. I had a knack for putting things together like my grandfather did even if it was just handy work around the house such as fixing a door. I loved buildings things and watching pieces come into a whole. This was the on setting of my knack for editing.
In my early teens my best friend (who lived only a block away) and I started making home movies together with a couple buddies from middle school. It was the first time I had even held a camera, let alone recorded footage and shot with one. This dragged over into high school as well, but unfortunately the former had been around the time of Jackass, so we were pretty rambunctious. For one of our earlier videos we even ran around with a handy cam and pretended to remake the Blair Witch Project. After shooting on tape we would take it into iMovie and edit together our video, which we eventually ended up recording all back onto tape.
Throughout high school I was involved in Computer Technology courses for all four years. From coding in HTML for web design to C++ programming for creating simple functions and operations, I was surrounded every week by a new challenge and task. I even created a simple game with the help of Microsoft’s Visual Basic. Later as high school progressed I moved into using Dreamweaver and Flash to make small animations for the sites we were creating. I never delved too deeply, though I was constantly applying myself and was recommended by my professor for the AP Computer Programming class. In 2004 I received the Computer Technology Award in my class.
I began my college life with the idea that I would make video games since I had also been quite the gamer. At the time I didn’t know all that I now know, but I knew that there was something visually appealing about games and graphics that I was drawn to. So I went through 3D modeling classes, and 2D animation with programs like After Effects and Maya that were completely foreign to me, but something wasn’t right. I couldn’t express myself in that medium as I had wanted. All those dances moves and Lego sets weren’t paying off even if I was getting excellent year end reviews on my performance. After two years I went back to video. I had missed the moving image.
I had always been big on monster movies and behind the scenes featurettes while growing up, but never to a point where I asked myself how it was done. I simply enjoyed the spectacle. Seeing all the layers that brought the scenes to life struck me. I was obsessed with visual effects breakdowns and I didn’t even know it at the time. My first job out of college included a lot of animation and compositing with After Effects as well as a good deal of editing throughout each project. I reached a point where I began to develop more skills akin to visual effects work and had become attached to the process of compositing.
All of my past experiences have really played a part in both my passion for editing and compositing. Putting things together will stick with me for the rest of my life. With editing I’m able to create something out of someone else’s vision, while at the same time entertaining and engaging the viewer. Compositing for me is simply the love for building and connecting different pieces to produce a whole, then seeing the finished piece altogether.