As a young filmmaker that just recently graduated from Howard University, has made a number of short films, interviewed celebrities like Akon and has been working in the business of multimedia for a number of différent outlets like The Daily Caller and one America News, it can be hard, exhausting and draining for me to keep track of what I want from a shot, scene, actor, or screenplay when I am developing a story.
So, how do I figure out what tickles my fancy in the film department? It’s usually something dark, ethereal and fantastical. I am the type of director that likes macabre-like films with a soft center and movies that are, likewise, visually stimulating. Basically, if Tim Burton and Robert Zemeckis had a baby, that would be me.
Anyway, I have gotten off track. When I was a kid I grew up watching a lot of horror films and dark cinema. When I went to grad school at Howard University, I began to study films that were in the era of German Expressionism. They have included F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
I noticed that the films had a certain unique quality about them. For starters, they make for some incredible vintage viewing and they are a great teacher for how films were made back in the day. These films dazzled and terrified me at the same time. It was like being a little kid again and watching all my favorite monster movies like I did when I was growing up.
German Expressionism has cast such a long shadow that it seems impossible to imagine what life would be without it. I remember getting older and being more interested in gory, dark films like Sweeney Todd. I took that stylistically darker approach to filmmaking and made darker films in college and grad school and I never noticed that I was making some really haunting films.
I definitely see myself making darker films in the future and I have always been interested and inspired by the genre and I’m always going to look back on the films of the genre and think about the magic that it captured in its prime.
