The camera is rolling. Spielberg is looking right at me.
“You gonna be a movie maker?” he asks.
I nod. “Hopefully.”
And then…black.
My camera battery dies. My stomach drops. I’ve been filming everything for years, but the one moment that actually mattered? Nothing. Gone.
I look at my mom, panicked. “The battery died.”
She does not flinch.
“Stop filming. Live in the moment.”
It was the fall of 1996. I was in middle school at the time, but that moment stuck with me for life. And looking back, I think about something Steve Jobs once said. “I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life.” That was me. I had always known. Cameras, short films, storytelling. It was never just a hobby. It was woven into my DNA. While other kids were dreaming about being astronauts or athletes, I was in my basement, making horror films, editing between two VCRs, figuring out how to make practical effects look real. Video was not something I did. It was how I processed the world.
It started with a Fisher-Price PXL 2000 camera when I was five years old. It was 1987, and I was already trying to recreate the magic I saw in movies. The illusions. The tricks. Horror films fascinated me because every kill, every scare, was essentially a magic trick played on the audience. I had to figure out how it was done.
By 1992, I had upgraded. A Panasonic SVHS camera became my new obsession. I filmed everything. Stop motion attempts, fake commercials, skits with friends. There was no audience, no feedback. Just me, the camera, and the drive to create. I was vlogging before vlogging existed, before anyone even thought filming yourself was normal.
Editing was brutal back then. No software, no undo button. Just two VCRs hooked together. One mistake, and I had to start over. But that only made me sharper. I learned to cut with precision, to time things perfectly, to get creative with transitions. Every project was a lesson.
Then, at 15, something happened that changed the way I thought about filmmaking forever.
My dad worked at a company that needed a corporate video. I had no idea what a corporate video was at the time. I just knew that if I filmed it and edited it, they would pay me one hundred dollars. That was more money than I had ever made doing anything.
But filmmaking was not my only obsession. Around this time, I discovered Bruce Lee. I was fascinated, not just by his movies but by the way he moved, the philosophy behind Jeet Kune Do, and his ability to adapt to any situation. There were no Jeet Kune Do instructors in my town, so I did the only thing I could. I taught myself in my basement. I scoured books, studied old VHS tapes, and practiced whatever techniques I could.
That mindset, learning by doing, experimenting, and pushing limits, was exactly how I approached filmmaking. Just like Bruce Lee did not believe in rigid styles, I did not believe in just one way to tell a story. I was already thinking like a filmmaker long before I even knew it.
And just like that, I had my first paying client.
It was not a horror movie. It was not a short film. But it was a video with purpose. And that realization stuck with me. The idea that video was not just art. It was valuable. Companies needed it. And if I could create something compelling, I could actually make a living doing what I loved.
By the time I arrived in New York City for film school in 2001, I had already spent years teaching myself to shoot, cut, and edit. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened a week into my first semester at The School of Visual Arts.
September 11.
Lower Manhattan was shut down. ATMs were not working. The entire city was in a state of shock. I had come to New York to chase my dream, and suddenly, the entire world had changed. It was a defining moment, not just for the country, but for me. I learned quickly that life was unpredictable, that nothing was guaranteed. But I also saw how important storytelling was during times of crisis. People needed connection, emotion, understanding, and films had the power to provide that.
That fueled me even more.
At SVA, I found my tribe. Filmmakers, artists, dreamers. We worked on each other’s projects, shot on actual film stock because digital was still in its infancy, and learned the fundamentals of cinematography, editing, and directing.
During high school, I had already developed an obsession with Bruce Lee. I spent hours in my basement trying to teach myself Jeet Kune Do. There were no instructors in my town, so I pieced together whatever I could from books and old VHS tapes. I was captivated by his philosophy and his ability to adapt. I did not know it then, but that fascination would come full circle in a way I never expected.
After graduation, reality hit hard.
No one hands you a directing job out of film school. I took what I could get, including selling popcorn outside the Tribeca Film Festival. But I kept grinding. I shot low-budget horror films, martial arts productions, real estate videos, anything that let me keep filming.
I had a breakthrough when I got to collaborate with a real stop-motion animation team that had previously worked for LEGO. It felt like everything was coming full circle, from my childhood fascination with stop motion to working alongside professionals in the field.
Then came a moment that changed everything. One day, I was walking through Brooklyn when I saw a massive mural of Bruce Lee. It stopped me in my tracks. I had spent years trying to learn his philosophy on my own, and now, right in front of me, was a martial arts academy teaching authentic Jeet Kune Do with a direct lineage back to Bruce Lee himself. I signed up immediately.
That is where I met James, my business partner. At the time, he asked if I could shoot a commercial for the academy. He saw firsthand the power of video when that commercial brought in business. That is when he had an idea. He told me, “We should start a video production company.”
I was the artist. He had a master’s in finance and a background in business and marketing. Together, we had the perfect balance. A creative and a strategist, both working toward the same goal. That combination created the foundation for what would become Top Notch Cinema.
That was over ten years ago. Today, Top Notch Cinema is a trusted name in corporate video production. While we have worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, we have also collaborated with countless mom-and-pop startups that you have never heard of. Sometimes, those projects are even more fun because they allow for greater creative risks than larger corporations typically take. There is always a delicate balance in how we approach each client, and that is what makes this work so exciting—testing the waters of what a client is comfortable doing and determining what is best for their specific audience. We have worked with Dollar Shave Club, Krispy Kreme, Reese’s, Four Seasons, T-Mobile, Crayola, Crazy Glue, KitchenAid, SimpliSafe, Venmo, Elf on a Shelf, Farberware, Ford, and the list goes on. Our videos have helped startups land multi-million dollar deals, and we have been featured on ABC, The Huffington Post, and Forbes.
Steve Jobs once said, “You can never connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward.” Looking back, I see how every piece of my life has led to this moment. The childhood obsession with magic. The endless hours cutting VHS tapes together. The corporate gig at fifteen that made me realize storytelling had value. The grind of breaking into the industry. The decision to build Top Notch Cinema.
It’s all storytelling. It’s all filmmaking. And it’s all magic.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
