When the Slider Shot Almost Cost Me the Location Picture this: 2 AM on the set of “Blood Buddies,” and we’re racing against a location permit that expires at sunrise. I needed one establishing slider shot to tie the entire opening sequence together. Simple dolly-in to reveal the abandoned hospital room where our characters wake … Read more
The Day I Finally Got It Take 28. My DP hadn’t spoken to me in an hour. The actress was visibly exhausted, her eye makeup smudged from actual frustration tears. We’d been on this single dolly shot for “Going Home” for three hours. Just a woman walking through a doorway. Simple. Except it wasn’t. Take … Read more
The Casting Session That Changed How I See Everything Twelve actors showed up for the lead role in “In The End.” Three of them were in their 50s. The rest were 20-somethings with theater degrees, headshots from expensive photographers, and agents who’d submitted them. The role? A daughter dealing with her mother’s death. Complex emotional … Read more
I Almost Quit YouTube After Three Months With Just 47 Subscribers Here’s the thing nobody tells you about starting a YouTube channel: the first 90 days are brutal. When I launched my channel to showcase the short films I’d been making—projects like “Going Home” and “Married & Isolated“—I thought people would just… find it. I … Read more
The 3 a.m. Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything Three years ago, I dragged myself out of bed at 3 a.m. for a sunrise shoot in Iceland. I’d just finished editing “Going Home” and was burnt out on close-ups and controlled lighting. I wanted something vast. Something cinematic. I mounted my 16mm lens, set up on … Read more
The Suitcase That Almost Ruined My Film Project Last summer, I flew to Iceland to shoot exterior sequences for “Par in the Fjords.” I’d packed all my camera accessories—lens filters, batteries, memory cards—into a budget suitcase I’d grabbed off Amazon. Figured it would be fine. It wasn’t fine. Somewhere between Vancouver and Reykjavik, a zipper … Read more
How to Make Engaging Videos: A Filmmaker’s Battle-Tested Guide to Content That Actually Works I remember sitting in my apartment after wrapping “Going Home,” exhausted, watching the view count crawl at a pace that felt like punishment. Hours of lighting setups, dozens of takes, meticulous color grading—and nobody was watching past the first 15 seconds. … Read more
The $40 Light That Saved My Film I’ll never forget the panic. Three hours into shooting “Blood Buddies,” our main light died. Fried. Just… gone. We had no backup. No rental budget. And an actor who’d driven two hours to be there. My DP looked at me like I’d just told him we were shooting … Read more
The iPhone Shot That Made the Final Cut We were three hours into shooting “Married & Isolated” when my DP’s DSLR overheated. We needed one more shot—a tight macro of wedding rings on a table. Simple shot. Critical for the edit. No camera. I pulled out my iPhone, clipped on a $25 macro lens attachment, … Read more
Netflix-Approved Cameras 2025/2026: What Actually Makes the Cut (And What You Really Need to Know) Here’s something nobody tells you about shooting for Netflix: I spent three months prepping my short film Going Home before it got selected for the 2024 Soho International Film Festival. The whole time, I was obsessing over gear lists and … Read more