As a casualty of COVID-19, a show I was set to perform in at the August 2020 Edinburgh Fringe Festival -- was sadly postponed.  Bard Overboard, written by my friend Harris Solomon, is a farce about the plights of a company of cruise ship actors who decide to shoot their shot with a production of Hamlet when a big-name Hollywood agent comes aboard.

To keep the show alive in our hearts and minds until an eventual live performance, we decided to put together a 30-minute sketch with the entire cast.  Bard Overboard: A Global Pandemic Holiday Special premiered in January of 2021 at the Space Online UK and received the Voice Magazine UK Editor’s Choice Award.

Though also a member of the cast, I put on my technical hat to help bring this project to fruition.  Having just finished working on the 126thAnnual Varsity Show, I lent my editing and filming experience on how to craft a Zoom call onscreen while using individual recordings from each cast member for better audio and visual quality.

The Varsity Show is Columbia University’s oldest performing arts tradition: every year an all-student team of writers, directors, designers, musicians, and performers collaborate to create and stage an original musical comedy about life at Columbia in the Spring.  When the COVID-19pandemic shut down campuses in March 2020, however, tradition had to adapt.

After the May2020 live production had to be cancelled, the creative team behind the 126thAnnual Varsity Show decided to “stage” a digital version of their show in December2020 instead.  To do so, they assembled a team of video editors to help splice together footage cast members had rehearsed and recording from their bedrooms across the world in a way that would make a gesture to live musical format while also exploring the new possibilities of “Zoom” Theatre.

I was brought on as both the compiling editor for the show (putting it all together at the end) and as an editor for several scenes and songs.  The above number, “Everybody Needs a Buddy,” is my favorite contribution to the overall project.  To watch the entire show, click here.

At Columbia, I served as the Treasurer for the Columbia Musical Theatre Society (CMTS) during my junior and senior years. Coincidentally, these were also the years when theatre had to move online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditionally, CMTS presents a Senior Showcase at the end of the Spring semester for graduating seniors to present a solo or duet of their choice to the theatre community.  When we could no longer host these events in person, though, plans had to change.

In 2020, students were all sent home for the end of the semester, so we had to compile self-recorded videos from all of our seniors.  As the board member with the most film/video experience, it fell on me to edit these submissions into a single digital event. Click here to view the 2020 CMTS Senior Showcase.

By Spring of 2021, most of our graduating seniors were living back on campus but under strict COVID protocols.  This meant that we could perform our senior showcase in person (albeit singing through masks)but would have to record it and present it digitally.  Once again, I took the lead on the technical aspects of filming the visuals, recording & mixing the audio, and editing the final product.  Above you can see the finale – a group rendition of “Goodbye” from Catch Me If You Can.  Click here to watch the full 2021 Senior Showcase.

In my first adventure with Pandemic Theatre, I edited a scene that my fellow students and I had to prepare for an acting class on Greek tragedy that had unexpectedly gone virtual when we were all sent home in March 2020.  This scene is from Sophocles’ Ajax when Odysseus discovers Ajax on his killing spree and confers with the goddess Athena.

To avoid the frustrations of Zoom recording, we all individually recorded on our cameras or laptops while being connected in real time on Zoom audio.

In high school, I was invited by my filmmaking teacher to participate in a five-person team for the annual 48-Hour High School Film-Off, one of the competitions organized by the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) in Seattle.  The challenge: in 48 hours, write, shoot, and edit a 3-minute short film that depicts two “arts” and uses the line “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.”

Given that this was my school’s first-ever entry in the 48-Hour Film-Off, we were flying truly blind and resigned to the idea that we would simply have fun without any ambitions of placing.  The result: “Watermelon in a Cart,” a story about the local high school talent show and its participants.  In addition to playing the comically confident student self-assured in the “art” of his speedy abilities as a grocery bagger, I wrote the draft of the script we eventually shot and edited the final video.

In an unexpected turn of events, our short was picked for 1st place in the competition (alas, none of us had thought to attend the ceremony to accept the prize in person…).

In my last semester of high school, I took a leap of faith and set out to produce a feature-length student film almost entirely on my own.  With a cast and (sometimes) crew of friends, I danced around school schedules and in between periods to shoot throughout the semester.

Constance follows Edwin, a high school student who finds himself in communication with his own doppelganger who claims to be “The Code Writer” – the detail-oriented but otherwise ambivalent creator of our universe(and many others…).  When Edwin’s fascination with his newfound friend starts to wear on his real-world friendships, however, he has to make a choice.

As with many of my early projects, I can’t help but overanalyze the many areas in which the story and film fell short in this first attempt, but artistic aspirations aside, writing, directing, shooting, performing, and editing my own film in high school was an incredible learning experience of artistic project management.

Above is a short reel highlighting some of my moments that highlight the editing and shooting style of the piece, which I am currently adapting into a new (hopefully much improved) screenplay.

During the summer after my senior year of high school, a friend’s dad reached out asking if I would be interested in coming down to the fire station where he worked to film an anniversary video for a celebration event of one of the station’s emergency vehicles.  Naturally, I said yes.

In particular, they wanted to pay homage to the opening sequence of the 1970s show S.W.A.T. (can’t say I’d ever heard of it, but they clearly loved it).  My friend and I spent an afternoon and evening at the fire station and training center running around with a camera while trying to keep up with the fire crew as they excitedly had us shoot one idea after the next.

For my junior year Civics class in high school, we had to follow a bill in throughout current congressional session and create a petition to get that bill signed.  Given my love for athletics (particularly soccer), I chose a bill that sought to rethink physical education in Washington State to better address the problem of childhood obesity.

To promote my petition, I gathered my younger brother’s friends to make a short video.  By the time we shot the video, the bill had already been struck, but I was able to pivot and instead promote the bill’s reintroduction.

There’s really nothing special about this video – it’s 6 minutes, 39 seconds of my family’s dogs running up and down the beach in 60fps slow-mo.  Nevertheless, I find it aesthetically pleasing, but that may just be me.