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This is the third music video I made with Kono Michi (see the other two here) and it’s probably our best. You Are the First was shot over the course of a 14-day road trip from NYC to Vegas and back… and I’ve gotta say it was probably the most fun I’ve had making a movie. The experience was an adventure in itself and I could hardly be happier with the film we produced.

Also, check out some behind the scenes action:

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This was a film I made with my dear friend/roommate Kelley Van Dilla as our submission to Vassar’s Youtube contest… I forget what the parameters were, but we ended up in first place and now the video’s up on their youtube channel. Wahoo! If I remember correctly, I found the music somewhere stating that it was free for use, but I don’t know that for sure… so after searching a while I found a link to the myspace page of the artist: sHORTfACEDbEAR

In celebrating the centenary of Elizabeth Bishop, Vassar Libraries organized an exhibition of her collected works. In addition to displaying selections of her writing, they invited faculty from the English department to speak to Bishop’s significance. Having never read a poem by Elizabeth Bishop before, I had the pleasure of discovering her work through these interviews.
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M Mark

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Judy Nichols

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Michael Joyce

This is a piece I put together as a sort of video journal from my time in South America.  I traveled with a group of kids as part of the program Carpe Diem Education.  I think the video speaks for itself… needless to say, it was an extremely positive experience.

For this first film, Michi flew me out to California for a week.  We quite literally exhausted ourselves working out all the scenes, sometimes completely on our own… but by the end of the week, we had a rough cut of the film.  For some reason, it’s one of my most proud accomplishments — it was extremely empowering, going out alone with just my laptop and camera and producing something of professional quality.

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This was shot all in one day up in New Hampshire. The weather turned was perfect and we were able to produce this, just the two of us, about a week.  Nothing like an intense go at guerrilla filmmaking. I think it turned out pretty good, considering…

I encountered Fundación En Via through my language school in Oaxaca, Mexico. The organization combines tourism and micro-finance in an effort to fight poverty outside the city of Oaxaca — essentially providing interest-free loans to borrowers to help facilitate social mobility.

It was humbling to hear these women speak and catch a glimpse of life so far removed from my own, yet somehow still connected — an $100 loan would be used to buy more flour for tortillas or a wider variety shoes to sell…

It’s inspiring to find people who’ve devoted themselves to helping their community. This video was meant to be my small contribution to their efforts.

I look at this film as a sort of personal essay on the first half of my college experience.  I wrote and shot the film directly before taking time off from school, which was a nice punctuation to that stage of my time at Vassar.  This film was originally inspired by the architecture on campus, but it sort of evolved into being more about the music than anything else.
I never tried to put the film into festivals, but it was definitely a good learning experience.

This was my first professional job as a filmmaker. The incredible actress/director Liv Ullmann (famous a couple generations before this) held a masterclass for YoungArts and in thanks, the foundation presented her the Arison Award — their highest honor.

As an alumni from the program, I was asked to put together the intro vid, so I actually got a chance to sit down and meet Liv Ullmann – which was kind of amazing (though also terrifying). The footage in the clip was provided by the Oscar-winning documentarians Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman and the music was composed by Jan Morgenstern, who has worked with my brother on a number of projects. Kimberley Browning was my supervisor for the project — it was great fun reconnecting with her again after YoungArts.

During my senior year in high school, I was approached by a woman named Iris Adams to make a short film. She had helped a young man work through the struggles of a tumultuous childhood to make it to college and she wanted to tell his story.  I did my best to translate it into film, but really the film is only a vessel to the true story. And in all honesty, I felt Iris was the real inspiration to the story.