(2019-2020) short film
I’m always looking to find new paths and new collaborators. In my random surfing of Instagram one day I stumbled upon black and white photography of graffiti taken in Seattle that caught my eye. I looked at the bio on the profile and in short, it said that the photographer was in the beginning stages of making a film about family troubles and mental health. I felt compelled to reach out as I could see there were multiple areas of shared interest between the two of us. This is how Shaz and I first met. I soon realised that Shaz was married to a woman who was the sister of a guy I spent my childhood into teenage years dancing with at ballet school.
It didn’t take long for Shaz and I to get deep into this film he was thinking about. Our conversations started to reshape the seed ideas for Shaz, and before too long he had asked me if I would like to star in his film. A new direction had emerged, of following a street artist trying to achieve fame and getting overtaken by the demons of social media addiction. This collaboration was really easy, Shaz and I both layed out what we wanted and needed. I let Shaz know when I was going to be putting art up in the streets, both my own or for friends, so he could come with and get the footage. We started talking about wanted locations and Shaz story boarded out the shots he wanted to collect. Step by step we checked off our shot list, and just a few months before covid exploded on the world we completed filming.
I’m only beginning to realise that Shaz has a long and full collaborative history with many very talented artists. This is where our film SODO Express gets really interesting and exciting. Since we finished filming Shaz has been updating me on all the artists involved in the post production, animation, editing, music, design, all folks who I have never met. The little bits I have seen of these artists’ works have been very encouraging to say the least. We are now months away from having a completed short film, SODO Express is being accepted to screen at festivals around the world, and we are laying the groundwork for (when Covid reveals what kind of world we will live in the future) gallery shows and film screenings in multiple countries.
All in all I have both made a new friend in Shaz and found a new collaborator who I know will be cooking up ideas for the both of us long into the future.
SODO EXPRESS TRAILOR
