Artist's Statement

My work is meant to encapsulate my experiences in a manner that embodies my vision, my ideas, and my humor. My artistic tendencies often gravitate towards my humor, specifically naive irony, and my visual techniques are often employed to portray that effectively. I draw a lot of influence from my experience skateboarding, and the people and events that I was subsequently exposed to. In the past my films have mainly featured characters my age because the only actors I had access to were my friends, sometimes even playing the role of themselves. Despite the limitations this caused, it made it easier to create characters I could relate to, because my own thoughts and instincts translated to the characters, not to mention my familiarity with my friends themselves. This allowed me to not only have an easier time seeing myself in the characters, but through development of those characters, I was able to learn things about myself through my own screenwriting. I notice myself gravitating towards recurring gags, relying on the characters that my friends have already loosely established. This probably has something to do with the increasing popularity of binging TV series and cinematic universes, as I find myself intrigued and drawn to the idea of recurring and connected characters and stories. Keeping this in mind, as I develop new work I will likely look for ways to build off of my old work, even if it is indirectly. The bond that my friends and I have, that skateboarding had so much to do with, is something I strive to recreate and present in my work.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Soundwalk

The rumble of hard polyurethane wheels on the concrete, mixed with the familiar scream of old, worn in, bearings gets me excited to skate. Kids cheering and screaming, are already riding the ups and downs of the skateboarding roller coaster. Their wheels slide and scrape. Their trucks clash and grind. The boards pop and snap. In the background is the dull roar of the FDR. The occasional siren of an emergency vehicle blaring down the highway comes as often as it goes, never breaking the concentration of someone trying a trick, or the pace of the chatter coming from people sitting on the sides of the park. A lady walks through the park with her dog. Her dog barks loudly. She shushes, trying to quiet her dog down. If your dogs barks at skateboards, don’t bring it to a skatepark. The droning bell from the school next to the park goes off, and the doors burst open with a wave of conversation, chatter, and straight up yelling. It lasts about three minutes and fades as the security guards co...
Read more

Sequence Analysis

Image
In this sequence, the main character, Mark Renton has gotten off heroin and on methadone but he has already used all his methadone for the next 18 hours so he visits his dealer, a stocky old man called Mother Superior, for another hit of heroin. The sequence begins with him flipping into Mother Superior's apartment. This is the second part of a graphic match cut of Renton jumping off a wall in the last scene to transition to this one. The juxtaposition of this match cut is worth noting, because when Renton jumps off a high brick wall and lands in the apartment, it establishes the apartment as a safe place in his mind. Renton and Mother Superior act out a sort of charade where Renton plays the role of a customer at a fancy restaurant, and Mother Superior acts as his server, taking Renton's coat and saying that his favorite dish is on the menu this evening. Mother Superior asks Renton if he would like to pay for his bill in advance, which turns out to be redundant because Rent...
Read more