Titanic II: Influencer, Right Ahead!
“Influencing History” is an original comedy series that places famous real-life Influencers in the middle of infamous historical events. It merges the present with the past, creating a unique lens to observe our current social-media-obsessed culture.
Shot aboard The Queen Mary docked in Long Beach, CA, Episode One: A Titanic Following features Travel and Lifestyle personality Max Emerson ‘influencing’ history on the Titanic in 1912. Surely his verified blue checkmark will guarantee him a spot on one of those coveted lifeboats…
This is my first short film. Everything you see I paid for, including the rental of The Queen Mary ship. Am I insane? Maybe. Was it insanely fun? Yes. Written in my Sketch 401 class at Upright Citizen’s Brigade in Los Angeles.
Subverse
The idea is simple: To explore our world and our relationships with technology and each other through a lens that is at once immediate and intuitive, but also distanced and removed. With the safety of perspective, we can then take a closer look at what it is to be slowly evolving humans surrounded by rapidly evolving technology with greater clarity. In our first season, inspired by Gamergate: Max meets a beautiful girl online, but when the ‘outside’ date goes awry he returns home for a drunken late-night porn binge and discovers a portal to the dark net. Bad things happen.
No Ringo
“No Ringo” was a passion project that was created during the 48 hr Film Festival World Film Competition. It was selected as Top 8 in the world and was therefore selected to be screened at the 2020 Cannes Short Film Corner. This project was, written, shot, edited, mixed, colored and delivered in 48hrs. It’s a true testament to what you can accomplish if you put the right people in place to accomplish a common goal.
Limerence
SYNOPSIS:
Phoebe lives an isolated life in an antique movie palace. When a mysterious woman turns up to hawk fliers for a play, Phoebe is a bug on a pin, instantly caught in her spell. Taking a private trip down the rabbit hole, Phoebe’s longing gives way to dreams, visions and feverous jealousy, culminating in a stunning confession of desire and need for connection.
BACKGROUND:
This project began almost ten years ago.
The initial motivation for this project was the Bechtdel test—my discovery of this particular piece of feminist critique, and my professional desire as a nascent director to create content that passed the test.
I then approached Angela Riccetti, a comedy writer and performer who I already had a working relationship with, and asked her if she had ideas we could develop together.
The LGBTQ elements in this film originate from Angela’s desire to play a character closer to her real life experience vs. my desire to write characters that aren’t just cis/straight/white/male (i.e. me). However, as we worked to develop the story, it eventually became a larger exploration of the concept of lovesickness (AKA “limerence”). We compared our lives and personal histories, found commonalities, and eventually included both of our personal experiences in the final film.
https://vimeo.com/glasscityfilms/review/217844108/44816658d0
Password: L1m3rencE
Website, Instagram
Hungry
A friend director Linda Notelovitz had shot this little film footage in South Africa and approached me here in NYC to edit this piece remotely.
Sad Man Meals
Loosely based on my divorce and move to New York City, this is a tale of lost love and filling the void with delicious food. This project helped me move on, and laugh at my sorrows.
Saint Frank
In August 2017, I served as the Executive Producer on Saint Frank with my friends and partners at Vinegar Hill. After a job goes wrong, Frank is called to clean up a mess he didn’t make. It’s a short film about best friends caught in a lose-lose situation.
Only a few months before, I had left my corporate job as the chief creative director at a Fortune 500 to start Bugle, a full service independent creative agency made in Washington, DC. Saint Frank was my first major personal investment and set the direction for the type of business I wanted to run.
A disciplined mentor of mine once told me, “Be careful what you do because you’ll end up doing it.” It’s a piece of advice that stuck, and for me, acknowledges business can enable art and that art should propel creative business ventures.
Like all creatives, I want to play my part in telling stories that move people. That means two things as a business owner of a small but profitable local agency. First, funding passion projects creates spaces for me and other artists to explore and express a more original side of our art. Second, it moves us as a collective increasingly toward the type of work we aspire to do more of (with the kind of people we want to do it with).
On professional assignments, Bugle and Vinegar Hill are always thinking about how to bring filmmaking into our commercial projects. Saint Frank was a shot to turn the camera towards ourselves, and direct the skills learned on client sets toward the production of our first sideshow film.
Iron sharpens iron.
Severance Pay
I and Jade wrote a story about what your retirement will look like without savings. We decided to use a metaphor to show your life is longer than your severance pay. Youri and Joon directed the film.
