Storytelling has always been a part of my core since I was a little. I’m a nerd and I love a good story. With music being a natural ability in my family, I wrote songs since I was a preteen, learning whatever instrument I could get my hands on. I would dabble with my parent’s video camera for music videos. I even presented a few history reports, using a music bed, a voice over, video, and archived videos using just a video camera, a VCR (this was in the 90’s), and a karaoke machine for the voiceovers.
Eventually in 2003, I created my own record label in Orlando called Rage Of Angels Records, producing Indie Rock, Conscious Hip Hop and Folktronica. I also got a music and audio producing degree during this time. I love producing music and sound, but unfortunately, it’s super saturated and not very marketable. During audio school, I got to take video classes and it reignited my love for storytelling in a visual medium.
Relocating to Denver in 2007, I started doing terrible music videos again with one of my label artists, but loved every second. Enter in my involvement in friendships of older people in the communities I became involved in. Two of these communities, the GALA community, an international organization of LGBTQ choirs, and the Center For Babaylan Studies, a community of scholars and professors bringing light to pre-colonial Philippines, inspired me to capture their important and captivating history stories in video.
With this passion to share their stories, I enrolled at The Art Institute of Colorado to learn documentary skills and to also make myself more marketable in the media industry. I’ve even started to write music film score and learning foley. This is my graduating quarter and I have this awesome opportunity interning for Hidden Woods Media. I’ve interned at other places, but this is the first time I actually feel like I’m learning about the experience of working in this industry. Hidden Woods Media truly cares about everyone’s experience: the needs of the clients and the needs of its employees and interns. They take the extra step to make sure I learn what I need to learn. I am looking forward to whatever happens the next three months interning with them and graduating with confidence with the experience I am getting with Hidden Woods Media.
