But no, I always knew that I wanted to kind of get into films because, you know, in reading
about special make-up effects, you could kind of see how the structure was, how it was both
in a weird way artistic and militaristic, where you got to travel and do crazy and make illusions
in front of the camera.
I mean, who wouldn't want to do that, you know?
I always knew that film and filmmaking was my ultimate destination.
How that manifested?
I had no idea.
I mean, ever since I walked down here, I was like, wow, I really want to live here.
I came here for the first time to the city properly.
It was my 13th birthday present from my father.
I found out in Long Island we're all going to meet at the Pentahotel, now gone, for the
Fangoria weekend of horrors.
In some respects, you know, this place is still one of the greatest places to shoot,
has some of the most, you know, let's not even go to the iconic point, like, you know,
you want to shoot, you know, downtown Wall Street, just go over to Wall Street.
But then, you know, you've got another scene taking place in like Barron Industrial Village.
You go out to East New York or you go out to, you know, some deeper parts of Brooklyn.
Shooting in Red Hook is still amazing to me.
I love shooting all that rust and grime.
Each project that I have done has, you know, just like anything that you create is always
going to have its, you know, certain flaws and certain successes.
And you know, in some, I've even been proud of the flaws because, you know, at least I
learned something from that, but like, wow, I messed that up.
I'm going to remember to never, ever, ever do that again.
In 2009, I made the van, which was a retelling of Moby Dick with bike messengers.
It was, I love it because it was just a crazy and a simple idea that I just crammed way
too much production into.
I think at one point I had a 15-person crew who weren't getting paid and I was feeding,
which was like the biggest expense we had, but it came out great.
We actually got proper permits.
The cops tried to twice kick us out of Red Hook where we were shooting because apparently
there was an oil refinery in the background and they were like, hey, dirty looking film
kids, oil refinery.
They must be terrorists.
But my producer, Chloe, on it, kept on pulling out the permit times.
She's like, oh yeah, the city says we can be here.
And they kind of took a look at that and they're like, huh, damn it.
And they kind of, you know, went off.
But that's been very successful, everyone really kind of loved that one.
That was a lot of fun, which was honestly my specific goal from the get-go.
I'm currently doing an album with Aberica.
He and Aberica got together with one of his buddies to create a soundtrack for a science
fiction movie that doesn't exist.
And then he gave me a call and said, hey, you want to write science fiction movie this
would go to?
And I said, sure.
And we're going to start recording voices for that the next few weeks.
And we hope to have a soft release or what have you.
I'm a little unclear on how music goes, but we're going to have that completed by December.
And it's going to be awesome.
It's called They Walk at Night.
I've also recently launched a website called TheDreamingCities.com, which basically a growing
collection of what I like to call independent stock footage.
A lot of my DP friends and who were just doing this in the off time and couldn't get anybody
to buy it because it didn't look like traditional stock imagery.
I threw up a website through a pay portal and that is technically live right now.
It's a soft open.
Also working on and will be shortly finishing the final leg of production on my short documentary.
It doesn't feel short.
It's at 17 minutes right now.
The tentative title for it is The Miraculous Laboratory of Dr. Adventure.
It's a documentary about real life superhero, inventor, and armor maker Dr. Adventure.
I've always wanted to film things that interest me.
And I know that sounds like a really stupid answer.
Like of course, I can't find anybody who makes things about things that bore them.
But no, curiosity I think is a thing.
Nothing fills about things that I find curious.
