About Me
There are two kinds of people in this world, and I'm one of them.
Raised in Honolulu and matured in New York, I'm apparently a bit of an island guy. I was formally educated at Maryknoll High School before attending New York University. Like any boy, my interests varied throughout my youth, from gung-ho soldiering to astronomy to ancient Rome, but I always came back to the same thing: storytelling.
It started with video games and my family's general love of movies. I was fascinated with other worlds, of experiencing something fantastical and (sadly) impossible. By the time I was ten years old, I began filtering all knowledge through a lens. If I read the Declaration of Independence, I saw Thomas Jefferson standing before the Continental Congress, proudly reading from a piece of parchment (with a nice slow dolly on a long lens and a hot kicker motivated by the one open window, beyond which a young rapscallion follows the proceedings). If studying a war or the history of some bygone era, I imagined it in the context of a video game or television series. I couldn't stop thinking of new stories and new worlds to explore. And as I grew older and became tired of the safe and stereotypical storytelling conventions, I developed a darker, more twisted style and sense of humor. I could no longer tolerate bland love stories or adventures where everyone comes out unscathed.
And so for over a decade, I've been determined to tell (slightly askew) stories for a living, with a particular interest in television. Though my writing is often succinct, my narratives are not; I have always preferred the long-form to a 120 minute feature film. I am much more interested in characters than plot. I prefer to surprise the audience by revealing a new side of a character they thought they understood, instead of revealing a story element that was kept hidden. It takes a long time to understand a realistic character; you must see how they shape events and how events shape them.
It serves horribly in conversation, but it is the simple truth that I have no preferred genre or style when it comes to stories. Whatever is affecting. Whatever provides compelling drama and multifaceted characters. Historical drama, science fiction, action adventure, wacky comedy, subdued comedy, fantasy, thriller, western - whatever works. I do admit to having a slight bias toward sci-fi and fantasy when creating a story from scratch, due to the freedom allowed to the writer. I have no fetish for ridiculous names or magical races; it is instead the ability to fashion your own rules. You are not bound to contemporary technology and customs or historical circumstance. You may make certain ideas explicit, embody entire themes in some ridiculous character. It is for these reasons that my written work so far may often be more fantasy-related, though it is not exclusively so.
Other Interests
Though my ultimate pursuit is writing and directing, I have explored other disciplines within filmmaking. As a low-cost alternative to making movies, I took up stop-motion animation in 2002, exploiting my LEGO collection (even greater savings!). I used the animation as an opportunity to learn digital editing and compositing software like Adobe After Effects.
Within conventional filmmaking, I enjoy the camera department and the editing room. I take pride in my visual style, and have acted as director of photography on a few short films. Recently, I have been working as a freelance videographer: shooting, editing, color correcting and outputting media for clients. Editing suits my natural sensibilities: I am patient, I like to experiment and I get motivated when the elements are there and merely need assembly.
And then there is my rudimentary study of economics and political philosophy, particularly the operation of the free market and its implications for an anarchist society.
Anarchist? Whaaaa?
My choice of political label can change day to day, but I prefer liberal (in the classical sense). I do, however, go further than many classical liberals advocated, as I believe society would be more prosperous and more orderly without any state at all. For that reason, a more accurate label might be liberal anarchist or laissez-faire anarchist. Those familiar with libertarianism might know the more popular labels of anarcho-capitalist and/or voluntaryist, but I am not satisfied with either of those. For reasons that are probably unfair and possibly incoherent, I consider my political beliefs to be in conflict, however subtly, with libertarianism. In short, I view libertarianism as a broad philosophy concerned with normative principles strongly based upon the natural rights tradition; as I reject the concept of natural rights and the primacy of the non-aggression principle as it is often presented, I prefer to distinguish myself from libertarianism.
Yes, I do think names matter.
The exhaustive story of my political development can be read here. I am also an humble atheist, an avid penny-pincher and prospective miser, and I believe that pacifism is a noble and mostly practical ideal.