Forrest Pando
“I can remember my Mom having many different jobs that all centered around a similar theme; caring for others. It started with massage therapy, then she worked as a phlebotomist for a local blood bank, then a dialysis tech, and now for the cancer center at UVA. This kindness towards others has been instilled in me and shapes the projects that I take on, which includes a large number of jobs for non-profits or low-budget work that I believe in.”
“Shortly after the divorce, my Dad moved to Russia and started working at a meat packing company. I assume he didn't move for the job but found it once he was over there, or at least I hope! I was 7 or 8 when he moved and we would have phone calls every couple of months and then we would do summer trips with him for 2 or 3 weeks. He went from that meat packing job to working for a tech company in Russia to now doing a bunch of corporate level cloud integration stuff out of London. I respect what it must have taken to climb the corporate ladder, especially one that spans multiple countries and none of them the one you were most familiar with, but not having him close weighed on me when I was younger.”
“I went to school in Virginia. In elementary school, a common project to have the kids do is draw what they want to be when they grew up. My Mom saved what I drew: me sitting in a directors chair with one of those oversized megaphones barking orders. Filmmaking has been a passion of mine for as long as I have known what it is. I realized that it was a viable career path shortly after I had to make a short film for my drama class my sophomore year of high school. I remember the feeling of working on the fine details of the edit in iMovie. I remember the sweat on the back of my neck as I showed the film to the class. My drama teacher then strongly recommended that I take a filmmaking class that had just started and I signed up for it immediately. In that class is when I decided that I would apply to colleges with film programs and that I would really want to pursue it as a career.”
“I went to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. I received a B.A. in Cinema as part of the graduating class of 2012. I want to say that I liked the program and that it shaped me as a filmmaker, but I just can't. The head of the program made the program a very toxic place to learn. A competitive filmmaking program can be good, but this was well beyond that.”
“Half-way through my cinema program, I knew I was never going to be able to camera op one of the 35mm films so I made a plea to my family. I asked them to all pitch in and buy me a Canon 7D. I was lucky enough that my grandpa just bought one for me outright. I remember the feeling of getting it in the mail and going..."now what?" I decided to go out and film in and around Richmond and I put together a short piece to music. I reached out to a couple different film production companies and one of them happened to be shooting a short film starring James Urbaniak. I worked as the on-set photographer for the film. From there I got to know the director a little bit better and showed him the short video I put together. He liked it and asked me to work on a couple of projects for him. I shot and edited an ad for a clothier company that won awards and I edited a lot of other projects for him as well over a two year period. This gave me great experience and led to working on bigger things in and around Richmond.”
“My entire family has been very supportive and have fostered creativity in me since I was young. Both sides of my family have artists in them. My great-grandfather on my dad's side was a talented writer and so is his daughter (my grandmother). My grandmother on my mom's side is a talented painter and so are my mother and aunt. I never faced any resistance from my family when I was thinking about pursuing a career in a creative industry.”
“Two of the filmmakers that have had the biggest influence on me is Susanne Bier and Joon Ho-Bong. Their films, "After the Wedding" and "Mother", respectively, have really shaped how I want to tell stories. "After the Wedding" definitely draws from the Dogma 95 principles and uses some of it to tell a very compelling story. The camera work is also entirely handheld which is something that I really love and most of our work incorporates. There is an element of imperfection that I think elevates stories that involve complex and muddy emotions. "Mother" has one of my favorite opening scenes of all time that ended up being a strong influence for a music video we shot last year for Lowland Hum for the song "Folded Flowers". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTERtJGxErw
“Broadly, I think Scandinavian and South Korean film are telling some of the most compelling stories in film right now. America as a culture shies away from tough themes like death and the fallout of bad choices or at least tells them with rose-colored glasses on. I really like the real, gritty, and even beautiful way Scandinavia and South Korea tell these stories. This has shaped the kind of stories I want to tell and how I tell them. “
“My wife and I have had two successful video production companies over the last 5 years. One of them has focused on wedding film, which was our breadwinner. The other has focused more on our commercial and creative content. As of this year, we have stopped booking weddings as it has become exhausting and all-consuming. We thought of it as a way to be able to do the more creative projects we were passionate about but it just didn't leave a lot of time to be able to do them. It is definitely scary to cut off an entire revenue stream, but at the same time, we are excited about the possibilities that it is opening up. I am now taking on some more editing work for other filmmakers in towns to offset the lack of wedding work. It's already been a great opportunity to have more collaborative experiences this year.”
“Ultimately my wife and I want to direct narrative films. Either film we have written or stories that we feel passionately about. Our abilities are extremely complementary and not a single one of our projects would be what they are without the collaboration and effort that we both put into them. I'm excited by the potential to take this into creating full-length narrative films together.”
“If you are someone who is considering a career in filmmaking or thinking about going to school for it, start by watching "The Story of Film: An Odyssey". I have re-watched this series multiple times now and always find something new. I think it is an amazing look at the first 100 years of cinema and can help you develop the tools to talk and think about film critically.”