Director, Editor, VFX, Nerd, Deaf
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“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
- Vincent Van Gogh
As a director... People say “write what you know” or “it should come from your own experiences” but for me growing up, watching movies and tv shows were how I connected to the world at large as a deaf person that can’t overhear things or passively pick things up in the background or participate in conversations with strangers like so many people do. So it was mainly how I learned about pop culture so I could relate with more people around me, broadened my worldview, and flexed my empathy muscle. Because they put me in situations I would possibly never experience, especially in the context of sci-fi and fantasy, and I would notice how I react. When I watch movies or shows I’m not a passive observer, I actively participate and subconsciously ask myself “what if that was me?”
For example, the episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer called “The Body” where, spoiler, the main character's mom dies. It really hits hard for me not because I’m watching how Buffy’s reacting, I’m seeing her mother as my mom or my dad even, and I’m reacting to that myself. But there’s also the layer to it where I’m seeing Buffy react and I notice whether she’s reacting differently than how I would, and I then ask myself why she would react that way rather than how I reacted. And on the other side of the same coin, there are moments in that episode that portrayed how I reacted after the fact so that made me connect even more cause we thought the same thing! 
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Asking that 'what if' question... So, me as a director, I use these opportunities to explore unusual situations that I’d potentially never be in and ask myself “what if?” That’s why I lean so heavily towards sci-if and fantasy, it may be unreal but the application to my life is very real. And because it’s my natural ability to quickly worldbuild and live in that world for however long, I use my directing ability to interpret and communicate that experience into something the audience can experience and see the world the way I see it, and create a tangible piece of work in order bring more people into that world and we can collectively ask that “what if?” question.
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Nominations and Wins
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The Case of the Obsidian Muskrat
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Deaf Code
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