Ken Stachnik
"Movies make my heart go pitter-pat. Ever since I was a little. I first fell in love with "Empire Strikes Back" and "Seventh Voyage of Sinbad". Both films beautifully blend their artistic and entertainment aspirations. Marrying those two things together, while telling the kinds of stories I want to tell, is what started me down this path!"
"My Dad worked for Hewlett Packard. And while he wasn't "on TV", he was kind of on a few TV's. He made inter-company and customer training videos for Hewlett Packard. His job was to translate the technical into the comprehensible. But he would also make it interesting, visual and even entertaining. He would do stuff like, use green-screen to "shrink himself down" and come "walking out on the wires" of the computer they were talking about. He'd pretend to try and keep his balance while talking about all the different ports and plugs."
"When I was 12, he did one on how servers send information back and forth. Some did it byte-by-byte, while HP's did it in packets. So he had me and my sister in this little skit. I was sprinting back and forth, taking these little wooden letters between the server and the processor, one-by-one. Or byte-by-byte. And then my sister would come in and just pick up all the blocks in one "packet" and take them across. It was a simple way to show, how and why their servers were better. It made a huge impression on me."
"Once I got to DeAnza college I tried a year of film school, but I ran into a lot of problems. I didn’t feel like I was learning filmmaking. I felt like I was learning a lot about and around filmmaking. But I wasn't really making films. I questioned if what I was learning was really going to help me be successful and get a job in the industry."
"So I changed my major, and proceeded to study just about everything else, at least once. But no matter how interesting the subject I studied, they just wouldn't hold my interest. Or not for very long. I would find lots of things intriguing, but nothing that fascinated me. After 6 years of major-hopping, and still without a degree. I realized the one thing that was consistent was at the end of every day, I would go home and pop in a movie. So I decided to take a break, clear my head, and decide what I really wanted to pursue."
"I moved to Chicago and started looking at Columbia College. But after doing the math, I quickly realized that I was not going to be able pay back $200,000 worth of debt, even if I came out the other side as a highly-paid college educated camera assistant! But I went ahead and took the tour anyway, just to see what I would be missing I guess. And at the end of the tour I noticed a sign-up sheet on a bulletin board that basically said ‘Freshman students sign-up here to PA on Senior students films’. So I asked myself, "Would anyone desperate for free help, ever ask someone who showed up, for their student id card?" Probably not."
"So I put my name up on the board, and sure enough a week later I got a call from a someone shooting a short film on 35mm and needed some help. So I did that, handed out some business cards and started meeting people. And since I didn't have any scheduling issues, as I wasn't actually going to college, I was almost always around to help! Word got around pretty quick. Fast forward three years and I had worked on around sixty student and professional sets. I'd shot on 35mm, Super 16mm, 16mm and digital. And right around that time, most of those people that I had gotten started with, were now seniors themselves. And needed to shoot their senior projects ."
"Columbia has a very good cinematography program. Mauro Fiore (Avatar) and Janusz Kaminski (Saving Private Ryan) both went there. And most of the people who enrolled in the cinematography program wanted to be, well cinematographers. And when they got to their senior projects, they didn't want to have to worry about anything other than cinematography. So I pitched a few of them the idea of letting me write and direct, so they could just shoot and not have to worry about story! As a result I got to direct 14 short films on film and it didn't cost me a dime. When they would show the rushes or finished project in class I would go in to see them projected. Sometimes the teacher would let me sit in the back, so I could see if I "wanted to take the class next quarter!" For me it was hands down the best film school education you can get. It was being on set, learning how to make movies and solving all the problems that come with that. I really think that film schools, especially some of the higher end film schools, teach their students how to make 100 million dollar movies, which is great if you have 100 million dollars! But 99% of us don’t and won't!"
"After film school I started working in the industry off and on in Chicago. I was doing a lot of grip and electric work at that time, while trying to do my own projects on the side, and still help out some of the other students that I had met. I actually ended up meeting the woman I eventually married on one of the first shorts I co-wrote and produced. We met at the wrap party and started dating. Then she got a chance to work as an Editor for Men's Health, which was her dream job. So we moved to rural Pennsylvania. I worked in the Rodale photo department for a while, produced several videos for them and even shot the first two music videos Men's Health ever did. I also kept myself busy shooting reality TV shows and promotional videos for local businesses. Anything I could do to keep myself from tending bar and out of retail!"
"I got into photography to strengthen my directing. I got a DSLR so I could practice shooting and composing shots. In Pennsylvania I found myself with a lot of extra time since I didn't know anyone, and turned to photography to keep myself company. It allowed me to stay creative and keep my skills sharp work on my directing as well."
"Two years later we were both going a little small town stir crazy. So when my wife got a promotion to Prevention Magazine in New York, we leapt at the opportunity and moved to Sunnyside. Just about twenty minutes from Manhattan on the train."
"However, it didn't take us long to realize that New York just wasn't for us. I think it's a great city to visit, but I suspect people who say they "love living in New York" are suffering actually suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. So after only a year we moved to LA."
"And the end of the day I am chasing directing work. That makes my heart go pitter-pat the fastest. But EVERYONE wants to direct! So I pay the bills shooting, editing, color correcting, etc. Anything to stay in practice. Ideally I'd love to get paid to direct full-time, but I'm a realist and need to keep all my skills sharp. Hopefully LA will bring me the happiness and success I've been working toward all these years!"
Ken is currently the head writer for the upcoming web-series "Monkey Horse Cop." And is currently in pre-production on his first feature film as cinematographer, due to be released next year.