5 Questions with The Video Kideo ("The Natural Museum of History")

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

Movies were my social currency from a young age. I grew up with 3 older sisters, a dad who worked for Circuit City and a conversion van with a TV/VHS player in the back. Between the hours spent memorizing every line of our entire VHS collection we’d write, direct and film our own movies and music videos. When I was 8 we set up a Real World style confessionals camera in my sister Sarah’s room where we aired our grievances with each other, our neighbors, kids at school and mom and dad. This was my first foray into documentary. 

2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?

Inspiration for The Natural Museum of History struck on New Year's Eve 2018 when my friend Alex was telling me about the Ken Burns documentary series on the history of baseball. I was profoundly moved by the idea of someone holding their hand in the air to catch a tiny ball somewhere in the whole big wide universe and for a moment feeling like they “got it.” At the time of writing this movie I was very interested in the idea that we find freedoms within limitations, the idea of the director as symphony conductor and blurring the lines between animation and live action. I took all of my big ideas about life and stuffed them into the ways I went about the process of making this movie, first and foremost the idea that if you have fun making the movie the movie will be fun to watch.

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?

The easiest part was, of course, the idea which hit me like a baseball over the head and made me shout I GOT IT!  After I brought my friends together for a game of “let’s make a movie” at the baseball fields in Prospect Park I found it very difficult to make sense of the footage we got. It took me a long time and a lot of edits to find the rhythm of the movie that I wanted. The animation for In Time Out also started as a simple idea but morphed into the 700+ drawings and hours of composition that make it up. I used this movie as a way to justify all the things I wanted to do, like draw a huge maze, build a giant computer out of cardboard, or learn CAD Designs and 3D printing to make the white glasses that grow in the movie. 

4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

I’ve actually been searching for the perfect movie for me to see all year. I’ve seen some good ones but it wasn’t until I revisited one of my all time favorite movies last week that I realized I already knew what the perfect movie for me was! That movie is the Jacques Rivette masterpiece Celine and Julie Go Boating. The film takes the collaborative art form that is filmmaking and emphasizes it in ways that inspire me to keep making movies! It blurs the line between audience and actor, it loops in on itself,  it’s colorful, fun and full of magic spells!

5) What’s next for you?

I’ve been working on my feature narrative script for years now and it’s finally taking form in ways that inspire me to start thinking on how to actualize the ideas. I’m also in production on an all archival documentary I’m co-directing with my friend and collaborator Brian Becker.

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IG: @thevideokideo