Tawan Bazemore
"Although I started watching horror movies as a child, my taste soon matured and I started to really enjoying foreign films. Whether it was French, Italian or Spanish, I just loved it all. I remember this play by the German writer Kafka, that really got my juices going for the arts. By the time I was ten, my mother took me to see ‘Vertigo’ and that totally did it for me. From that time on, I just knew I had to get involved in film someway.”
"From then on, I started acting terribly at school because I didn’t want to only learn about math! I really wanted to paint and to do creative things. Everything for me had to do with pictures, so the teacher always had me at the front of the class so that I could learn. At first, they thought I had learning problems. But then by the sixth grade, I won a national short story contest for a horror story I wrote called “Sam’s Revenge Massacre at School 11”. After that, the school just figured that I was ‘creative!’"
“To get a career going in filmmaking, I did the NYU Summer Program, where I took up cinematography. I figured if you know the functions of the camera well enough, then you can probably learn to become a director from those experiences. In the spirit of learning everything about filmmaking, I later went on to the Lee Strasberg Institute to study acting for two years, which was amazing.”
“However, while I was still at NYU, they took us to a lab to see the film process and a color timing session. When I first saw the way you could manipulate the image, I immediately became fascinated with color timing and what could be done in post. I guess that’s where the journey begins for me and where my love for color correction comes from."
"The Summer Program at NYU was a great experience because it was very hands on, as apposed to the degree program which was very theoretical. I really wanted a ‘hands on experience’ and that’s what the NYU Tisch School of the Arts gives you. However, the reality for me was that no matter what you love, a filmmaker wasn't something I could ever afford to be in my neighborhood!”
“So I found my way into web development and became a certified web developer. I soon drifted back into motion pictures again, as I was working on websites with all this video. I had to learn about streaming, importing footage off analog cameras and digitizing everything. I then started to color correct all of these videos using the software tools that were available at the time. However, I still wasn’t really doing what I loved, but it was a way of getting back into film in some ways.”
“It was about this time the Panasonic DVX100A came out with 24p. Then the movie ‘28 Days Later’ came out. These two seemingly unrelated things were the inspiration for me to finally get into filmmaking. I went to Barnes and Noble and started buying all of the books on cinematography, videography and lighting I could find. I then bought books about great directors, like Kubrick, Fellini and Hitchcock."
"I was so inspired by what I was reading that I thought the best way to get into filmmaking was to simply shoot my own film. It started off being a cop thriller, but in the end, it was just me throwing all of these cool shots together. People kept asking me what my movie was about and I would reply, ‘the hell if I know, but it looks great!’ It was so much fun, that I was hooked on the filmmaking process.”
"The whole film thing started to become a reality for me in 1996, when my first feature length screenplay ‘Black Roses’ was optioned. Later in that very same year, my second script ‘Nadine Scott’ was picked up for production, with me as the director."
"Two years later, using the pseudonym Roman De’ Winter, I created a Hitchcock-like short called ‘Crime Scene’. This film finally gave came me the validation I was looking for, receiving official selection at the New York Film and video Festival!”
“But while I was living in New Jersey, I couldn’t pursue filmmaking as much as I wanted to. My family could never support me in the way I needed, because working on films is not a life they had ever known before. At the time, it was really hard for them to fathom that I could ever make a career from filmmaking.”
“I figured then, that I needed to be in a place where no-one knew me. A place where people would only judge me by the work I could show them. So, when I moved to LA, twelve years ago, I don’t think anyone in New Jersey thought I it would work out for me.”
“Once I moved to LA, I was finally able to shoot a film that I think, actually made sense. I released ‘Point Of View’ in 2008, and to my surprise this film made it all the way to the Cannes Film Festival.”
"Not only did I direct, light and shoot this film, but I also did the color grade as well. This film went onto the So Cal Independent Film Festival and also picked up 5 Stars at Spike Lee’s Babelgum Online Film Festival. Which was not bad for a one man production team with no crew and only two actors!"
"Before grading ‘Point Of View,’ nobody really trusted me to color grade their films. I would do the conforms for other colorists, but I never got to do the main grade. After the success of my film, I was able to use it as my calling card as a colorist. Before long, and thanks to word-of-mouth, I was soon working on all of these great independent films."
"I then started to get jobs off Craig’s List, which kept me going for a good couple of years. Finally, I was introduced to two graduates from the New York Film Academy who had three shorts they wanted me to grade. Because of my work on these three films, ‘Boom Boom’, ‘The Knowing of Ali’ and ‘Super Heroes Blvd’, I suddenly started to get all of this very cool work coming in. I have been working consistently on shorts, features and music videos as a colorist ever since.”
“I also do a lot of onset DIT work as well, and so I feel I have to be super familiar with all of the new cameras out there. Whenever I really need to know about a camera, I can just go out and rent it and do my own camera tests. In that way, I can mess around with all of these different looks in post, whenever I have some time.”
“Ever since I studied cinematography at NYU, I also take every opportunity I can to shoot. But when I DP my own films, I try to avoid doing a full scale color grade and go for a straight color timing instead. I am very confident with my lighting and feel safe to ‘bake-in’ my looks. When I am shooting, I aim to get 80% of the look I am going for onset and then do my final tweaks in post. It’s easier for me to do it this way, because I know exactly what I need as the colorist.”
“But now is the time for me to do what I have always wanted to do which is to direct films. The film I am currently directing is ‘Sound’. It’s all about a deaf women who regains her hearing, only to find this miracle quickly turns into a tortuous nightmare. I am really enjoying my time directing, and I am looking to shoot a lot more of my own films in the future”
“The last twelve years for me in LA, has been a steady climb as a DP, colorist, and now director. Because of what I have achieved and had to endure, other members of my family are now getting into directing. It feels so wonderful to me, to be able to show others that you can follow your dream and still be successful.”