Like most of us, I have plenty of regrets from the past. “Beyond The Next Rise” explores the notion of all of them gathered into one place such as a reunion event of some sort. What would it look like to face the combined weight of all of them at once?

For the video production, the only things I bought were two poseable wooden mannequins and one airplane-sized bottle of whiskey. Everything else was either something I already owned or something I made from materials that I had lying around. Looking back, I really enjoyed taxing my imagination by seeing how much could be conjured up mainly through the repurposing of what was already here. The results are surprisingly effective – and all within my production budget of about $20.

I’ll also add that although wooden mannequins are slightly less versatile than human actors, they get the job done for a fraction of the cost. Naturally, they still wanted to offer “creative input” and take “artistic license” with my directions, but that’s always to be expected. My only real complaint is that the one in the ball cap kept trying to drink the whiskey between scenes – had to keep an eye on that guy.

I’ve created a music video for a song I recently finished writing/recording. I had to dig pretty deep to make it happen because just like my music production effort, my music video operation is also a one-man show.

The photos that appear in this video are pictures that I took of some of the actual places which inspired the lyrics for this song.

I just finished this video for a new song I wrote/recorded. I wanted to get Clooney or Pitt, but I regret that my production budget of $0.00 forced me to cast myself in all the roles contained herein.

I was inspired to write this song after noticing a few people over the years pan-handling with fairly clever signs on display in place of the usual sentiments. Faced with the serious subjects of poverty and homelessness, I wanted to explore how they might intersect with what’s considered more mainstream life. At any given point, we are all closer to despair than we would like to think and each choice we quietly make is an inflection point that might profoundly affect the trajectory of our lives.

Ironically, a homeless guy was watching me film one of the sequences for this video. Fortunately for me, he didn’t decide to come over and kick my ass.