A Writer’s Statement

Cinema feels as if it was always the destination, but the journey here was far from clear. My foray into the world of storytelling began with prose — laughably obvious attempts at trying to emulate Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, anything with lots (and lots) of action scenes. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t going to be an author.

I was so convinced, in fact, that when it was my turn to introduce myself in ninth grade, I stood up in an auditorium full of my peers, and said I was an author. Now, mind you, a brotha had not completed not one single novel yet — countless short stories, sure, but never had I ever completed a full-blown book.

It took until senior year of high school (with an even higher stack of half-finished novels) for me to realize something needed to give. I might’ve loved reading books, but writing them no longer felt like my calling.

Now, here’s the part where I could spin a tall tale about how I first discovered what screenwriting was, but the truth is I don’t remember. All I remember is a feeling of shock at the way it “looked” compared to prose, and then an immediate feeling of excitement like, “this is it!”

It was at the University of Georgia that I first stepped into the shoes of a director, and discovered a passion for the entire process of bringing films to life. It was no longer enough for me to just write screenplays ; I wanted to find a crew for them, to cast them, to shoot them, and to one day release them for my family and friends to see.

That’s the journey I’m on now, filming projects with talented friends who are fellow filmmakers in their own right, continuing to study and learn the craft of cinema, and working towards putting myself in position to one day film stories for the whole world to see.