Make America Decent Again
The idea for Partnership For A Trump-Free America was born out of the idea that Trump is a danger to democracy like drugs are a danger for kids. The film parodies the original Monster.com ad to show the unfit role model Trump has bestowed on America and their kids. The social component parodies the Just Say No anti-drug campaign asking the public to Just Say No To Trump.
Lego Rivals
“Ever since a second car was built, there has been racing. Two fierce rivals collide on the path to victory, only one can win the Grand Prix.”
I wanted to experiment with a higher frame rate to increase the impact in the scenes in order to achieve a more competitive and engaging race. This project was my first experiment in animating stop motion at 24 frames per second.
The higher frame rate allowed the cars to feel as though they were going faster and some of the collisions more impactful.
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.
