A brief history of my timeline as editor, producer, director, and many other roles.
As a creator of professional content in a fairly subjective field, it is important to understand your clients' wants, needs, and tastes -- as well as the audience they are hoping to reach. Striking a healthy balance between the desired product and your very own "je ne sais quoi" can prove a challenge for some. Leaning too heavily into one particular side can be the difference between a marketable product or an overproduced ego boost. In the end, however, I always like to remind myself that less can ultimately be more; it pays to be flexible.
I studied cinema and videography at Radford University, from 2014 - 2018. I had a vague understanding of the principles of photography and film prior to my studies, but it had always been more of a feeling than a concrete understanding of "why" things needed to be the way they were. I would watch movies as a young adult and wonder just HOW projects of such massive scale could be created - how did they create such drastic depth of field, such fantastic scenery, or how they remember the positions of each actor as scenes go on? Though I was naïve to think most gorgeous sceneries were authentic places you could visit (embarrassingly true), what mattered is that I began to see through the veils that film draws over our eyes: I was beginning to see how the sausage was made.
When I was conducting my studies, I discovered a deep love for editing - after all, it was what I wanted to do initially when I started schooling! I found out that editing gave me the power to create and mold narratives the way that I saw fit. Video clips were no longer random shots collected after a long photoshoot, they were the next moments of a fickle timeline. They were glimpses through the eyes of perspectives beyond my own. They were windows of opportunity afforded to me as a passenger to their existence. I discovered that I could manipulate footage to solicit emotional response, to call others to action, to uncover truths and lies, or purposefully distort both therein. It didn't just give me the knowledge to operate, It gave me a voice to tell a story, and with this control came freedom; I began to understand that there are no limits when it comes to the capacity of creativity. It is not a question of IF it is possible, but rather how to make it possible, and what you can do to show others that there are truly no rules, no boundaries, no limits.
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I have professionally produced content mainly through the Adobe suite of programs, including (but not limited to):
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom + Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Premiere
As well as other media production programs such as:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer, Blender's Animation Studio, Unreal Engine 5