- Hey.

So usually we have a, you know, a topic where we have a couple people

panel talking about an issue.

But today we're just kind of curious, what's been happening with Chris Gagnon.

So Chris first of all, you're, you're in a place right now that

doesn't have a lot of internet.

Where, where are you talking to us from right now?

Hi, Randy.

Well, so about three years ago, a little bit more than three years ago.

I was actually making a film for a nonprofit organization in Tanzania.

And I was just there for a couple of weeks.

And in that time I was one of the people that I was interviewing

and spending time with.

I happened to have fallen in love with, and so she said, and she's

also from the U S but she was saying, oh, I've been working in

this organization for a few years.

I'm looking for another job also in east Africa.

And I think you should move here.

So your hands right now, I'm in, yeah.

I'm east Africa, Southern Africa, depending on how

you, how you put the country.

Also some people call it central Africa.

Yeah, so I moved to Malawi about three years ago and Yeah, it's a great country.

It's a really beautiful country.

It's super undeveloped being landlocked.

It hasn't had a lot of business that come, this came this way.

And when Europe was in Africa, co colonizing, you know, 150 years

ago and they, they just didn't have a lot of use for Malawi.

So there's just, wasn't a lot built here.

There wasn't a lot of infrastructure.

And so, yeah, it's like 93% of the country are from.

My wife works with farmers and yeah, I'm here and figuring out

what making videos here is like.

So yeah, it's been a, it's been a really nice three years, also difficult for, for

internet reasons, for electricity reasons.

Water going out is not always the most fun thing, but it's overall level.

All right.

So we're going to dive into all that.

Thank you for sharing that and, you know, thanks for making it work and,

and being here throughout you know, all the, all the issues to get here.

So, okay.

So what you graduated in 2011, right?

Yeah.

And in December of 2011.

All right.

So last I remembered and, and one of the reasons I really wanted to talk

to you is you you had been one of the students that I really liked, you know,

watching your films especially like, as we got to the the showcases, right?

Like you, you would always put up like really heartfelt, really unique films.

And you know, always we're one of the people, you know, to watch and say

like, all right, like Chris is going to have just, just a cool career.

And you really have had just like this incredible journey that like,

I've had a lot of fun watching on Facebook and I'm really excited to, to

share with the people viewing today.

So.

So you so after grand valley kind of take us through kinda maybe

your senior year into, like what, what launched your, your career?

Sure.

So I at my time at grand valley, I had an internship with a, like a communications

and PR company in Southfield, Michigan.

And when I finished, when I graduated.

Offered me a job.

And so I worked there for, I guess, maybe two years, and

that was like a running gun.

Like you wake up, you go to a shoot.

You.

Come back, you edit it in the afternoon and then you post it to

their social media account, like either that evening or the next morning.

So it was like every day making, making films.

And that was just for, yeah.

At the time, you know, this is 2012, 2013.

So it was like when a lot of companies were starting to be like, oh, we

need to take social media seriously.

So it was companies like G M D T E blue cross blue shield, Michigan who were yeah.

Trying to get their Facebook pages, active YouTube pages.

So, but when I think about that time, I really think about, even though I was

doing some aftereffects in college, like those couple years outside, there's a

lot of time spent with after effects and just like being able to learn.

And I had a lot of opportunities to like, when I needed to look

something up, I was on video copilot.

Yeah, that was.

Formative time, especially because it created a, like a

really intense pace of, of work.

After a couple of years of doing that, I had someone who had actually saw my, the

work I do for fun and was like, oh, this guy seems real, crazy and interesting.

And maybe we could have him edit some of our, our films.

And so that was working in Detroit with a organization called order

and other, and they were doing all of Shinola's films at the.

That's the big watch company in Detroit, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So that was really cool because we were, we were a small team and we were

getting like, we were renting really nice cameras, really nice lenses.

And that was like a very different style of production.

After that first job where it was like everyday turning over a video,

that next job they were telling me, you slow down, you're going too fast.

Like everything just feels maybe like path of least resistance.

Like you need to like make the viewer really like, pause, turn,

think, ask themselves the question.

They're always talking about like the mystery box and like just

all these like, like essentially really taking a lot of keys from.

Documentaries rather than advertising.

And so that was a really cool experience.

Like I remember, yeah.

Some of those first edits, like you have a month, like, you need to be here, you need

to be working on it every day for a month.

And we would just want to see like an amazing film at the end,

which I didn't really have from that, that first job that you had.

Right.

I didn't have really a roadmap of what, what am I going to do if I

needed to edit a video for 30 days?

And yeah, there's a lot more footage.

There's a lot more to look through, but yeah, I really had

to kind of make a roadmap for what does a 30 day edit look like?

And, and there was, you know, massive amounts of footage for some of these, even

though they were maybe five minute films.

And I had a really good time doing that.

I mean, the production quality was able to be so much higher.

Right.

Yeah.

Sorry with a red camera in one of those shots, which, you know, especially

in 2012 was like, it's pretty, pretty awesome equipment, like super cool.

And.

We shot a lot with Alexa and they were renting like $50,000 lenses, which I

just, I had, you know, I was coming from shooting on a, like a TTY or

something like that to having like, you know, the Alexa like, oh, you want

to, you know, you want to take this home tonight and keep it at your house?

Like, yeah, I'll take that home.

I'll shoot a couple of things.

So that was just like a really interesting, oh, it was, I was just, I

felt like a kid in a candy shop for those for those couple of years working with.

Yeah.

A little different than getting.

Yeah, exactly.

So, and, but when you had been in a school, you were making

a lot of fiction stuff, right?

So like even, even then coming right out of college, these, these weren't

necessarily a fulfillment that you were making as a student, right?

Yeah.

And actually the vision when I graduated and even through all of these, so

I've kind of walked through four years now, through those four years, the

plan was always, I'm saving up money.

I'm moving to California.

I was also making a lot of films at home for fun.

I was trying to get better at VFX.

I kind of had this vision that I was going to write movies.

I was going to make them super low budget.

I wanted to like really have my hands in everything and control everything.

And so I actually wrote a couple of feature length scripts in that

point, and I was very little.

I felt like I was building up to move to California.

And when I had the, when I had the access to all these, you know, nice cameras and

these, you know, having these long time to edit, I was like, oh, this is great.

I'm establishing a real, I'm going to, you know, like, this is so much more

impressive than showing up with like these one day turnaround, you know PR

pieces, advertising pieces that were just like for more, for like a Facebook page.

Like these are like beautiful films.

So.

This is good.

I'm going to move to California.

These will help me get a little bit more like credentials because they're,

you know, they're these beautiful, like almost documentary style advertisements.

Yeah, which I mean, yeah.

Well, I mean, I relate a lot to that story too.

I had also, you know done fiction in college and then had, you know, kind of

that same, you know, kind of four year period where I was like, all right, I'm

going to do some documentaries, like local documentaries and going to you know,

eventually get out to California, right?

Like everything's like a stepping stone to do that.

But, I mean, I, I personally fell in love with, with documentary and

telling those stories, there was one particular documentary that like,

you know, I was just editing the footage that we had done and just

like really emotionally connected to.

And I was like, this is a whole different world than, than what I had been doing.

Did you, did you feel some of that love for documentary yourself?

Or were you still kind of like grinding to get through it,

you know, throughout those.

Definitely I think like, especially with movies, like, I don't remember exactly

what exit through the gift shop came out, but like, there was a lot of really

amazing documentary content that was becoming available in those next couple of

years after university that was inspiring.

And also when I was working with order and other, the, the managers,

there were just like essentially having me watch documentaries

constantly and like good ones too.

And we would even like sometimes in the office, just watch.

Really interesting documentaries.

And that was I guess did change a little bit of my vision.

I, I also started to suspect that I didn't have enough maybe life experience.

I was just like, you know what?

I think that maybe when I'm writing these films, they're all a little bit

more basic than I would like them to be.

And I was like, I don't know if I have enough life experience to write anything

interesting from a fiction standpoint.

So I started to think more about, oh, well, maybe when

I'm young and I don't know.

I mean, obviously there's amazing people making fiction films from a very young

age, but for my own self, I was just like, I'm not mature enough to write

something that's actually gonna last like, or like to like still be that

I'll still like in a couple of years.

So I thought, you know what?

Documentary is great because you can jump into other people's life experiences

and, and Yeah, I guess I, I just started to slowly drift into that direction.

It's also just a lot easier.

I mean well obviously documentaries have their own challenges, but in terms of

like getting a crew together and like, oh, let's, let's interview this really

interesting person and see where it goes.

And then, you know, you keep on pulling that thread.

It's easy to get started with something like that, as opposed to like having,

you know, the vision of fiction and then.

You know, moving forward on a fiction film, right?

You it's just, it feels like it takes a much bigger.

Effort.

I don't know.

Do you, are you following what I'm saying?

Everything's from scratch for sure.

Yeah.

The words are from scratch.

The, the shots are from scratch.

Even the people in the shots are from scratch.

Right?

Everything is like has to be placed there.

For sure, but I mean, at the same time, your first like documentary

that I had that I know about was, was about you and your brother going

across the United States on a bicycle.

So, so even so like your life was still interesting enough to be filming yourself.

What how did that come to be?

Where did that even come.

So I was living in Ferndale and I was commuting like 10 miles a day

on my bicycle to work every day.

And my brother was also living in Ferndale, working in downtown Detroit.

So we were doing that every day, even in the winter.

Like, I mean, I think we had the cutoff at like 15 degrees.

Like we can't remember.

So we're just racking up a lot of miles.

Like, you know what, we can really do something like this is, this

is better than just saving gas.

You know?

Like we were both living, trying to live, you know, to pay off

some student debt at that time.

So we're like trying to live as cheap as possible.

And so it's like, you know, we could probably do something

with all these miles.

We're accruing.

It's like, well, what w what might we do.

And I had the idea of riding across the country and he was like, okay.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it was just nice that we were both in a time of life

where we could figure out a way to take you know, six weeks off work.

I think in the end, I, I asked my boss, I said, I'd really like to

write a book across the country.

And they came back to me and said, okay, you have 45.

And I was reading all these blogs about it and it's like,

you know, we did it in 90 days.

We did an 80 days, 70 days, you know, and I was just like 45, but so that

broke down and it ended up breaking down to almost a hundred miles a day.

So yeah, we made a feature length documentary about it too.

So it's like, it was.

So like while we're, I mean, if you can imagine like 110 degrees, like

we're in our second day, it's like, John, we need to go 95 miles today

and we're at like 40 miles so hot.

And it was just like going straight up the mountains, you know, you leave the ocean,

it's almost immediately up in California and and we're dying and I'm like, Hey,

hold on, let me get the camera out.

I need to get some shots.

He was just like, no, I'm not stopping.

DAPI.

So, yeah, it was sometimes, I mean, cause also, you know, like I have this tiny

travel tripod, like it was a bear and actually even on the third day I said,

let's Google where the closest airport is.

Let's tell everyone that it's over and like we failed and that was.

Something, we were seriously considering honestly, we were probably

saved by the fact that we decided to raise some money for a charity.

So we had like people who had donated in like $18,000.

So it was like, no, you can't actually just go to the airport and fly home.

So yeah, we just started having to pick up more and more miles.

And when, by the time we got to Kansas, I feel like we had really.

Hit our stride.

And we had a number of, you know, days over a hundred miles in a row, man.

It was brutal though.

There was no days off.

There was no days off.

It was a documentary it's called how to ride a bicycle across the USA.

How to, you're going to give us some good tips.

Yeah, no, there's a lot of, there's a lot of tips in there cause I would

really recommend it to anybody.

Who's maybe interesting, interested I would say don't do it in 45 days, figure

out a way to get a cup two months off, because there was so many things, so

many opportunities like where people would invite us into their home and

like, oh, let me show you around my small town that we just had to say no to.

It was honestly heartbreaking.

I mean, that would have been amazing too for.

For a, I guess I'd have been a different style of documentary.

The style we have is very much about it's about the experience

of seeing so much of the country in such a short period of time.

And it is about the people we met as well.

There's some like in Colorado being like way up in the mountains and meeting a

prospect, or that looks exactly like the guy from, you know, toy story two

there's like the old prospector with.

Spitting image of that man.

And he talked to the same way.

It was just like, you know, like, or just meeting characters and, and people

inviting us into their homes, feeding us.

Like, it was just an amazing way to see the country.

Yeah.

So, I mean, where did you stay?

I mean, so going from west coast to east coast, that's a lot of

nights you know, you said 45 days, where do you stay all those nights?

Where do you charge your batteries?

Where do you dump your footage?

Yeah, so I brought a lot of bad.

At the time I was still shooting on what did I bring?

I brought a T3.

I, and so I brought, I just really loaded up on batteries.

Cause I knew that charging was being an issue.

We did have a solar panel, but that ended up not being fast enough to

really charge camera batteries.

We would stop at gas stations and cause especially in those early days, like going

through Nevada, we would, there was times we went 70 miles without seeing anything.

I mean maybe a couple of cars would pass, but you would, it'd be like eight,

just so you know, our maps would tell us like, just, you know, for the next 80

miles, you're not going to see anybody.

So it's like an entire day.

And.

But also, I guess I would say it's like, I wasn't filming like really

long shots that eat up a ton of footage or eat up a ton of battery.

You know, it was like getting out the camera for a big landscape of the desert.

And then, you know, we slowly ride by, and then maybe some

riding footage of this and that.

And then at the end of the day, maybe just like some really short

interviews Just like, just like almost like little detail shots.

I mean, with shooting every day for 45 days, we did a lot of

the main interviews at the end.

We did read a lot at beforehand.

What we were expecting, but we did a lot of the interviews at

the end for like, okay, day 10.

I'm going to show you the footage.

Tell me more.

Cause I went with my brother, tell me like what you were feeling in this.

And we were able to kind of like pull out a lot of the narrative at the end.

Afterward.

And actually, I also, because I love after effects so much, I was able to do a lot

of, I think, fun graphics at the end.

Like, cause I didn't have like a good shot of like our hands

were completely purple, you know?

So like I would do like example, I would like do examples or like

talking about like something that.

How exactly did cause we weren't real cyclists.

We were like just commuter cyclists, who, you know, you ride here, you ride there.

But it's like, you know, we learned very quickly that, you know, you have

to have like 33% of your weight on your hands, 33% of your weight on your

butt, 33% of your weight on your feet.

Because if it's out of balance, something is just going to be, something's going

to get torn whenever you have too much pressure on is going to get torn up.

When you're riding for 12 hours a day.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean, coast to coast in 45 days worth of footage, you said you're

doing kind of like short shots, but you still ended up with a lot of footage.

What was editing like of all of this stuff?

Like how did you pull a story together?

Well, the hardest part was actually like editing for my real job.

Cause at the time I was just like, I mean, I did.

Assistant camera's stuff, but mostly I was editing from eight to six or

eight to five or something like that.

And at the end I would have to come home and say, Editing the documentary.

That was the most difficult part was editing it after a full day of editing

and then, or on Saturdays and Sundays.

But we do have of your question real quick.

Suzanne Zach is asking, where can we find your bicycle documentary?

So it was, so this is kind of a terrible thing, but it was on

YouTube literally like two days ago.

And I got a notification yesterday.

There because of, we used to dance at all the state signs that because there's

some copyrighted music in there that they they made it on available to see.

So I'm going to have to re upload it.

I think I'm going to put it on Vimeo and see if maybe, or I could just take out

that, that little bit of diabetic sound.

Well, yourself are a musician, right?

Like you're, you're a composer yourself.

So do you want to talk about your own music at all?

Yeah.

So my relationship with music has been it's, especially as I think a lot of

people go through this as a musician.

Maybe you love it as a teenager.

And then in college you usually have a lot of other people with time on

their hands and you can make things.

With in a community that's not too difficult to put together.

And then you, when you graduate and maybe people start having less

free time, you know, as they have, you know, either nine to fives or

they have children or whatever.

So I made a lot of music.

I was determined to at least make one album every year.

But music is such a difficult thing too.

I've never had the energy to actually.

You know, like try to put it out there, like, oh, listen to my

music, but it is something that is extremely therapeutic for me.

And actually, so after that job at order and other, and when I went

freelancing ever since then, I don't think I've ever, you know, I've done

a lot of editing work since then.

And I've just used all my own music.

And so I've never really had to license any music.

Any of the short films that have produced?

Yeah.

And, and that's one of the great things about moving.

So I had, you know, my freelance, I was busy.

I was, you know, I had a lot of clients.

I was working seven days a week and I was those last couple of years in Detroit,

then I moved here and I essentially lost all of those clients, which is.

A really difficult decision, but I was very certain about my partner.

And so when I was moving here, I, I knew that I was making the right decision,

but there was some, obviously some difficulties there with who am I, if like,

you know, if I've been, this is who I am.

I've been editing.

I've been spending my time.

Shoot, whoops.

That's my glass of water.

I've been shooting, you know, videos for, you know, all these people now I'm here.

What am I going to.

And it really kind of opened me up to music in a new way, because when I don't

have any work, I've been making music, I've been filming myself, making music.

So instead of doing music video, I'm doing like production videos.

And so I've been doing one of those, I guess I've done about 30 this year,

which is a pretty intense schedule to, you know, it's usually on, on Sunday,

I will come up with an idea for.

On Monday, I'll let it just percolate a little bit Tuesday.

I'll, you know, pull out the gear.

Even actually this wall of plants behind me was cause earlier today I needed like

a background for recording the synth part and I thought, oh, I'll build a wall.

A wall of of plants.

They're not usually all just along the wall here, but so

yeah, Tuesdays I'm a one day I had to schedule this week Tuesdays.

I'm usually I'm recording the, a lot of the parts, Wednesday editing,

Thursday editing, and then on Friday and Saturday, I'll show it to a couple

of friends, see what they think.

And Sunday, a post, which has been a really.

A really different way to approach music, as opposed to like, when you're

just looking at a music dos screen, they digital audio workstation and

being like, okay, where do I start?

What do I do thinking about?

It's like, okay, I'm going to film everything I'm going to record.

And so it's, yeah, it's been just a different way to approach it and I'm

happy to kind of fuse the two things.

I love most music production and video production.

With something.

So kind of, not for anybody else, except for me, I've really been able to go kind

of crazy with animation in those and just doing silly, silly design things, which

I think silly is silly is my aesthetic.

I love anything that makes me feel like a kid again.

Yeah, well, and I think that's such an important lesson too.

I, so I personally have not moved to Malawi.

But here we have been hit by the pandemic.

And so you know, for me, I had kind of that, that moment of who am I without

work you know, for, for three months, right after, you know, everything got shut

down, I'd come right off of doing, you know, some crazy TV shows that just had

me working around the clock, you know?

And, and so.

Digging inside and being like, well, you know, why do I make are to,

what am I even making art about?

Who am I I think is like, you know, that's pretty important.

And you know, when you're just grinding towards something, grinding

towards something, you know, it just seems like, you know, the next

step is the whole reason to do it.

But not necessarily maybe there's not that much wisdom in there.

So I'm really glad you had that opportunity to learn about yourself.

There How did you even get to that point where you're moving out to

Malawi and dropping those clients?

What you know, so you came back from riding across the country,

you got your purple hands.

You know, you've got $800 footage to cut.

What, what got you like what you.

Well, I got a little bit of a reputation amongst my friends, as someone who

does crazy things, because I had also, actually, when I was at grand

valley, I rode my skateboard across Michigan, which is like 250 miles.

And then I had done this trip.

I had tried to ride my bicycle across the UPP also when I was

at grand valley and that failed.

So that was my first bicycle through.

I didn't, I had never even heard of a bicycle tour.

I just.

I was lamenting the last days of summer and decided I was going to ride across CP.

So there was a couple of these little experiments.

And then after the riding the bicycle across the country, I had, yeah, so

people had kind of known, I was into crazy things and I had a friend of a

friend who was like, I'm going to spend a year down in Latin America backpacking.

And I like to not go alone.

Would you like to come with me?

And I had never met this guy, but I said, okay.

And that would be 2005.

And so that was kind of the beginning.

So this is even before college, you, you backpack to cross, I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

2015, 2000.

Oh yeah.

So this is after those jobs, I had just, I had been freelancing for six

months and I w I was way more, I had way more work than I had expected.

So I was like, oh, You know, I don't have that much responsibility.

I don't have my rent is, you know, my my lease for the house I was

renting was coming to an end and I said, okay, I'm going to do it.

So I did yeah, I ended up only doing nine months backpacking around

Latin America because my brother got married and I came home for that.

But actually the guy, the guy and I, we flew down to Guatemala.

And I think we spent maybe five, three days together.

And then I was just like, I think I want to go do my own thing.

He's was like, yeah, me too.

Not that we had any disagreements or anything, but I had just realized that

it was maybe a little bit more of a.

I dunno.

I just wanted to maybe spend some time on my own, which was, I think pretty unique.

This episode is brought to you by the dirt coning Memorial

film and video scholarship.

Here's Gretchen vintage, remembering Dirk honing

for more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit the link in the.

Now, back to the show We do have this picture of you in Latin

America up on some rocks, right.

You're just kind of all alone.

What like, did you see many other people as you were

backpacking across Latin America?

What like what was that?

Who did you talk to?

Who did you speak any what are they speaking?

Latin America.

So, yeah, I spoke Spanish I mean, not like.

Incredibly fluent, but I had enough from speaking like five or six years

between high school and grand valley.

And yeah, so actually I had a lot, I met a lot of people from Europe, a lot

Australians, a lot of New Zealand people, like speaking of like the people who I was

able to like relax and speak English with.

And so, yeah, I, I made a number of friends.

I, I had actually ended up spending a lot of time with this guy from New Zealand.

And I think we traveled essentially on and off, like, we'd meet up in different

towns, but we did, we spent a lot of time together between Nicaragua and

even all the way down to Columbia.

Yeah.

But yeah, I made a lot of friends.

I think it really expanded my worldview in a way that needed

to have like, needed to happen.

And and on, I mean, and honestly it set me up for my next adventure,

which was after that I had met so many people in Europe.

I mean, pretty much every country said, okay, next thing

I'm going to do is ride my bike.

Europe.

And so I say, I went back, I freelance for another eight months or so maybe a year.

And I was saving up to, huh?

Are you freelancing here in the states?

Yeah, I came back to Michigan for my brother's wedding and then I

freelanced for about nine months.

Now unfortunately this is maybe the craziest thing that's

happened to me since university.

I had, I had like really built out that same bicycle.

I took across the USA, but I haven't.

Kind of like just made everything better.

And so I got on the plane to go to Germany.

I was going to start in Berlin and I had a layover in Portugal

when I got off the plane.

I didn't have my.

And to this day, I don't know what happened, but, so I

went to the passport control.

It was just a layover for like, you know, an hour and a half.

And they're like, oh, you don't have your passport.

That's a crime in this country.

I'm like, well, it's probably just on the plane.

Like it's probably just in the seat back or it's probably just

under, it was underneath my butt.

I was sleeping when the plane landed, you know?

So I was like, no, like, oh, well we're going to check

the plane, but I don't think.

And the guy who I had at the police stations, like, you know,

I hate Americans, I hate them.

So, oh no.

And he's like, it's my lucky day because the American embassy is on holiday today.

I don't know why or what it was a, some sort of Portuguese holiday.

And so he said, I'm going to put you in a really nice hotel.

He sends me to jail.

Wow.

Oh, it was terrible.

And no one's spoken like no one spoke English.

I didn't really, I had no idea what was happening.

I had all these plans for like what I was going to be doing in Berlin.

I had like, I was ready to go to see, I had like really specked

out everything I wanted to do.

And I was in jail.

And no one would tell me what was exactly going on.

The guy who managed the jail did speak a little English and he came

in and he's like, I've been running this place for 11 years and never

has there been an American in here.

This is for people they find on the streets who maybe were selling

drugs and their visa has expired and they stay in here until.

I forget exactly what the procedure was.

And then they get sent back to their home country after 90 days,

if XYZ paperwork hasn't been done.

So I was in there for a little bit over two days and I was just

like sleeping on this floor.

It was so hot.

They were giving us one tiny water bottle a day.

It was traumatic.

It was honestly, it was dramatic.

Like I had some serious.

I still have fear about police in a way that I've never had before.

Which, I mean, I'm like the most privileged person in the world and

it's like, but man, I see a police officer now I'm like real, real.

It was.

Cause it just felt so absolutely no control.

So they, they shit, they sent, they ended up putting me on a plane, not telling me

anything, like they'd taken my belt off.

So I didn't hang myself.

Like just all these weird things.

They put me on a plane and they sent me back to Yeah.

I just arrived in Boston, had no information what was going on.

They'd taken all my things.

And when I got to the passport control there, some guy just

appeared out of nowhere.

I was like, here's this guy's things.

And they searched it.

And I just was like 1:00 AM in Boston.

And it's like, now what?

So I got a plane ticket back to Detroit and I knew that I was

going to be absolutely traumatized.

And I was maybe never going to get on a plane again.

So I bought a plane ticket for two days later and I didn't even have a.

Oh, so then he went to emergency passport control and said, Hey, I have

a plane ticket for two days from now.

So I need a password emergency passport tomorrow.

And they provided that, which is, I can't believe I did that.

What else?

But a bold move.

And I got on a plane just two days later back to Berlin, but I didn't,

they didn't have room for my bicycle.

So I bought that.

The bicycle you saw in that picture is like an old, I mean, it was probably

from the early nineties, a women's bicycle that I could find for 50 Euro

and the gears broke on the first day and the whole, the whole bicycle trip

across Europe was just, it's just like watching something fail very slowly.

The group, the gears broke on the first day.

Like, no, I mean, Germany, I was trying to learn some German, but.

Nobody spoke English in the middle of the country at all.

So I was like sleeping on a raw or not rocks.

I was sleeping under like pine trees.

I was just trying to find, and everyone in Germany, you know,

they take the rules very seriously.

So I was like pretty, I know, slipping in some uncomfortable places where I

was like, oh, but don't go back to jail.

Right.

So in Latin America and in Europe, are you making videos during this

or is this all just, just for your.

And Latin America.

I had the intention of making videos.

You know, I had pretty much after college.

I had always had a camera in my hand or around my neck.

And I think in Latin America kind of made me start to be a little bit less.

So like holding onto every moment and like need to film this need

to film this need to film this because like I ended up smashed.

So somehow my camera got smashed and then My laptop, someone

spilled a rum and Coke on my laptop.

And like, just like, and then my Kindle broke.

Like, it was just like all by the end.

I felt like a, I was like a monk.

Like I had, like, I was like, I've given up all electronics, you know, but I

came back so enthused and actually the, the, I, the first five days I was back,

I made, I think the, my favorite music I've ever made like that day, I was just.

On a mission.

And I was like, oh, okay.

So I don't always have to be the guy capturing everything all the time.

It was really nice to disconnect a little bit.

And then when I went to Germany I had a small camera I brought with me,

but then after the police incident, I just like, I'm going total Zen.

You can see in the picture, I just have like a sleeping bag,

water bottle, a tiny tent.

It was very minimal.

Right, right.

And it sounds like, you know, you're really kind of filling yourself up.

You know, like, like you said, you know, you're, you're disconnecting,

you're, you're engaging with people.

You're, you know, having things, these experiences that most people can only

like read about or watch movies about.

You know, and you said it, it created, you know, you created some of the

best music that you've ever made.

W what did you like tap into?

What did that music sound like?

What, you know, what, how did this affect your art?

Well, I think everything before that was maybe like a little bit

more moody, not all of it, but when I came back, it's it really sounds

like Sounds all very colorful.

You know, if you can imagine, like going around and like these old cars,

like the, the buses they use for public transit, there are like old elementary

school buses from the United States that are retired sent down there and

they're like painted crazy colors.

You know, they have all these interesting fabrics and, you know,

people are coming on the bus with all sorts of animals and there's music.

So I think it was just like, I, to me, it sounds like a little bit more,

just like an explosion of color.

I'm not sure if other people would hear it exactly.

That way.

It also, I think is I, I think I stopped taking myself so seriously.

Oh yeah.

Without your intention when you're taking these trips and, you know,

was it your intention to, you know, get to know yourself more?

Or is that just the result?

This is a good, this is a good question.

It's making me as myself with deep.

I think I was looking.

I think I was just looking for.

Hmm.

I don't know what I was looking for.

Actually.

I think I'd have to think about that.

Certainly I don't know.

I don't know.

I think it probably shifted a number of times as well.

I really, I mean, now I'm living in a country that you know,

where the culture is completely different and I think it does.

It's Sue.

I think it suits me the sill, the slower pace of life.

It's similar in some ways it's similar to Latin America where things are much more.

I, I perceive them as much more personable.

This is, this is me.

This is a hike.

We do almost every Saturday.

That's we have a couple of.

Yeah, I mean, I like living in the mountains.

I like having we're next to an enormous lake, you know, so I, it's not like

Michigan, but it's pretty close.

It's also very beautiful.

I I've, I've had a new community like here, you can see, I

joined the basketball team.

Yeah.

You know what, actually, I have one thing I'd like to transition to.

So I I came back from the, the Europe trip and then it was only

about a year later that I went to Tanzania and met my partner.

And so I, I met her there.

Huh, but why did you go out to Tanzania?

I was one of the, one of my clients who was a producer who hired me

a lot was just like, Hey, you've, you've done a lot of paid workforce.

We're doing a film about this NGO in Tanzania.

And would you edit it for free?

And I said, okay.

Yeah, like they'd given me so much work and now occasionally do some free stuff.

And so I had edited it and then I was so impressed with the interview.

I was like, wow, these people are amazing.

I'd like to meet them.

Like, we're actually going to go back and film an update video in.

So they invited me to come with them.

I was going to shoot some footage.

And so I went and that's, I was there in those, you know, those

last, honestly it was like six days.

I really talked to Omari.

That's my partner's name before I decided that I was going to shut

down my business in Detroit and.

Move, but she, you know, she had, she was also thinking about

switching careers or switching jobs.

So she was going to move from Tanzania and she was looking at some jobs in

Malawi, which is where we were at.

So she resigned in, I kind of went home.

I finished up all my commitments that I had left, but I had also

just, I found a van for like 1100.

It was $1,200.

And I put a, just put my bed in the back.

I built out, put some lights in the top.

I just took some of the furniture from my bedroom and put it

into the back of the van.

And in the next, so she didn't have a job yet.

She was just like applying for jobs.

So we said, okay, we could live in this for six months.

Yeah.

And so we traveled around the U S she met all of my friends and mint

family and closest friends.

I was able to meet a lot of her family and her closest friends.

It was like a really everyone thought we were crazy.

You guys met in Tanzania, you knew each other for five day or six or seven days,

something like that when you decided to like be life partners and now you guys

are traveling around in his van and on the second day of van life though we found

it wasn't going to be six months because she had gotten the position in Malawi.

So we said, okay.

So it was like six or seven weeks that we lived in the van.

It was amazing.

I'd like to do it again, but.

You know, whenever, whenever there's maybe another transition.

Yeah, so that was, that was kind of, this is, I guess the, the, the

new, I don't even know if you'd call it an adventure anymore.

It's it feels more like just life.

But the big thing that we're doing now is actually, I, we just bought a little bit

of land here and we're building a house.

I'm building a music studio, video studio, and it's at the base of

that mountain that you just saw and.

Yeah, we're starting a farm because in the last year, I think, I think

all of us have become a little bit more aware of climate change.

And I've been thinking a lot more about what I'm consuming and I have

the luxury here that I'm buying.

A lot of things without plastic, you know, like being able to go to a a

spice shop and be able to buy all my beans or my rice all my spices.

And yeah, so we started thinking about, well, what, what's the next natural step?

And I was like, well, what if we grew our own food?

And that's kind of the direction we're going in.

And I'm, I'm thinking that also that's a pretty good, well, for like, in

terms of like making films is like, if we're going to, we're going to have a

farm, I'm going to be learning a lot.

I've been learning a lot about farming this year going into farming, but like,

I don't want to lose like the idea.

No, the video aspect, like there's a lot to share here.

Like what can we learn about growing our own food and how can that

affect, maybe give our friends the information or skills that they need to.

A little bit more sustainably.

Yeah, absolutely.

And the, it sounds like art has either been woven through all of this or you

know, has gotten you to the next step, whether it's, you know, taking the video

out to Tanzania or, you know, trying to make a video across the United States.

How do you see the stuff that you learned at grand valley as you know,

how, how did it prepare you or, you know, are there things that you

wish you had known at grand valley?

Well, I guess, I guess the first thing would be in the same way that Latin

America, like that backpacking trip there really kind of expanded my worldview.

I would say the same thing happened at grand valley, especially in those

first couple of years, you know really challenge, maybe challenge

some of the things that I thought I knew as like the big mature 18

year old that I was after that I.

Yeah, I'm really thankful for a lot of the classes.

The F the class that most takes me, like reminds me of like, still,

like, I still hear Kim Robert's voice in my head from film, video art.

Because I just remember at the beginning, she's like, you just have to learn

something new this week and make a film.

I, this is how I remember it.

At least learn something new and make a, a film using that knowledge.

I feel like that's still what I'm doing with like these beat

videos that I'm doing every week.

And I just remember.

So appreciating the structure of that, but also the freedom of it.

And I, I think that was a, no, everyone maybe has a little bit

of a different recipe for, to get the creative juices flowing.

But I, I noticed that that time, that, that was really effective for me.

And I still try to re kind of recreate that, you know, that scenario.

Yeah, sure.

It sounds like you're learning new stuff just about everyday out there.

Huh?

Do you have collaborators that you're working with?

So you said you're like building a music studio.

Your website is of course up there.

People want to see, you know, some of the work you've done.

What like who are you collaborating with out there and, you know, is it

just going to be you in the studio or other people or what is the music.

Yeah.

I mean, the longer I'm here, I mean, as a, as a foreigner, like, it takes

some time for people to trust you because there's a lot of foreigners.

They come in, they leave really quick and maybe they're just like extracting,

especially with a camera, right.

They're extracting little images and there's a huge culture here of like,

don't let a white person take a picture of you because they're going to go

back to America and tell everyone they're going to feed this child.

And, but you'll never receive that food.

Right.

It's going to go to some, someone else.

So.

It's really about building community first and slowly, you know, as I have

a community here, friends and people who are essentially family to me, I've been

pulling them into the videos and in even more now than ever people are knocking at

the gate and being like let's collaborate.

And so that's been really excited.

Like I have a lot of things that are, are coming up, but, you know, You

can only, you can only film so fast.

You can only, especially since it's just like a one man crew.

I did just have a neighbor who moved here from the UK, who is a audio and.

And he also does film stuff.

So I'm hoping, hoping he can help me be because there's so many

talented musicians and artists here that just don't have access to

cameras, microphones and anything.

And so there's like a huge need for people who have some technical equip

technical equipment, technical skills to like capture that and help

them share what they're good at.

So, yeah, it's something that I feel like I'm just starting to.

Just starting to do in the last like six months, I've been able to,

I I've just got to that level of trust with like a certain community.

And now that people see it, it's kind of like you know, starting to roll forward

and like doing karaoke in the community.

I'm the first karaoke DJ in town.

So like you know, like people start to know you from just like

doing other things, like, you know, karaoke, DJ people come up, they

sing, I heard some amazing singers.

I'm like, we gotta get you on a track.

So yeah, that's been.

That's been really great.

And just also people who aren't artists, just neighbors, they

come over and I'll ask them to.

Sing something, or like if you had to write a song, what would it be about?

And like there's some things like that coming up.

Well, yeah, really given that platform and that sounds like

a, what a, what a great life.

Do you have any words you want to say to current students or,

you know, something that you wish?

I mean, obviously now you've, you've traveled many, many miles.

You've had a lot of experiences that, you know, like I said, most

people won't even be able to experience or, or read about what.

You know, what would you have told your, your college self?

No, this is very, just like finance-based, but I would say that editing was, I just

felt like there's always editing work.

People always like, oh, and obviously not all, a lot of, it's not glamorous.

It's just like, oh, we have, we shot all this terrible footage.

Now we need someone to go through, you know, 10 hours of terrible footage

and put together a five minute video.

But, but there's, I just feel like there's always editing work if you are putting

yourself out there and editing things.

And when I went freelance, you know, I enjoy pretty much all aspects of

filmmaking, but editing was what I chose just because I was trying to play it safe.

And it made me feel a little bit more comfortable.

Like I think I'll be able to pay the room with this and yeah,

I think, I think that's true.

I think that there's.

There's a lot of things that need to be edited out there.

And I think that it felt like job security going into editing for me.

Certainly.

The other thing I'd just say is after effects after

effects is just the playground.

Every playground I love after effects so much and it's,

it's getting slow right now.

I don't know if you were in after effects, but there's some of the

more recent updates or so, but I just can't leave it because it's so.

It's such a wonderful playground.

Well, I'm really glad that you've been able to dig deep inside and,

you know, really discovered some of this this inspiration for your

art, you know, really love watching your, your journey out there.

And I'm glad we got to share some of this with, with people out there.

So keep up the great work and you know, maybe we'll come

see him allow you someday.

Thanks, Randy.

It's been nice to catch up.

Yeah.

Thanks for listening to me.

Thanks for being here.

And of course, so we'll be back here for alumni lives just about every month.

So you know, follow us on there on the, on the Facebook and YouTube.

Thanks so much, Chris.

All right.

Thanks.