My First Short Movie

Director's Statement

I was laid off from my last job of seven years working for a major news organization. I had worked as a graphic designer all together for over 20 years. This career had chosen me because of my natural God bestowed talent in art and anything creative. My teacher once stated that art stands for Anything Ralph Tries. I had to make a decision to keep going in a career where art ability no longer made the difference between a good graphic artist and a clip art dependent designer.

Well I choose to go in a new direction of TV media. First I bought my own camera and other equipment and soon found that just having the equipment and desire was not enough to step out and produce professional quality videos. I needed training and I needed it fast. I enrolled in courses at two schools and with the help of teachers who had worked in the news and film industry I excelled very quickly. I soon gained the skills needed to make the transition from graphic artist to a videographer/editor. Ironically I ended up covering some of the same events that my prior employer was covering. I covered events like The Long Beach Toyota Grand Prix, Fashion Week, and Behind the scenes of feature films. I now had the chance to Interviewing well known actors and celebs.

After seeing the real process of making a film. My desire to create more narrative stories became a challenge of it's own. I don't write my own stories yet so I began to ask friends if I could shoot some of their scripts. I received many stories from various writers. The one thing they all had in common was their stories were all over the place. I realized these are almost impossible to shoot on a low or no budget production.

Then I met Helen Banks, I read three of her short scripts and fell in love with her writing style and ability. Helen's scripts are concise and very intuitive for me to understand and breakdown. We agreed to shoot just one of her shorts so we could get a feel for how we can work together. I felt The Pact was a story that is somewhat common and timely. Others who read the script agreed this was the one to start with. We got the crew together and began to shoot The Pact. After shooting that first take I understood Helen's skills did not stop at the writing. She turned it on and I knew we had something special as a team. I used all of my skills to create a compelling look and feel. The lighting, the framing and even the sound I created to give our movie a unique quality. I can't wait to start on our next project there are stories to be told, money to be made, dreams and goals to be realized. Thank you.