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Located in: Chattanooga, TN
GUILDS: Non-Union | Storytellers
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StoryRight...I need to talk about myself now. Well, to start off, one thing I have discovered in life is that if you follow God's path then when you look back your footprints will be in a straight line.
So, I first became interested in storytelling at age 2 when I learned how to lie, like all kids do. However, my love for storytelling started when I was 9 after I was given a camera for Christmas. My early attempts at films were mostly amateurish and spontaneous...yeah... But in late 2009, however, I started work on a more ambitious project, Beyond Under, inspired by the biblical account of Gideon. As that project took shape, I began to take storytelling more seriously, a lot of people might say that I actually take storytelling to seriously now. But hay, I look at it this way: if storytelling was a good enough tool for Jesus to use to teach when He walked on earth, then storytelling should probably be taken seriously. Anyway, back to the story. I worked on the script for Beyond Under for a year, then, we spent another year and a half actually filming it. By the time Beyond Under premiered, it was a 95-minute feature film with a cast of about 60..ish. I know, I'm an overachiever. Anyway, moral of the story, this is a calling for me, one that goes beyond what I make, one that is leading me to a Master Story. Oh, that was actually really cool sounding "one that is leading me to a Master Story." |
Details
Appearance |
- GENDER: Male
- AGE: 21
- ETHNICITY: Caucasian
- HEIGHT: 5'14"
- WEIGHT: 135lbs
- BUILD: Toothpick
- HAIR: Brown
- EYES: Hazel
Skills |
- Screenwriting
- Editing
- Film Production
Journey |
Creative Journey Spiritual Journey Educational Journey Professional Journey
The Short
I suppose an introduction is expected right about now... Hello There! My name is Christopher D. Stewart. I am a Storyteller like you. I work as a storyteller producer for S.C. TreeHouse, which is an independent production company that specializes in Transmedia Storytelling.
Anyway, moving on. Exposition, let's go!
Okay, so, about nine...ish years ago my family and I founded S.C. TreeHouse as a film production company that could offer undiscovered filmmakers a chance to work on larger film crews. However, we quickly realized that it was not just filmmakers we had the opportunity to help, but we had the chance to reach out to all kinds of storytellers. Thus we reconstructed ourselves to be one of the oddest Transmedia Storytelling companies in the world. Being a Transmedia Storytelling company has given us a really unique opportunity to work with and help all kinds of storytellers from across the globe.
So, my job at S.C. TreeHouse is that of a transmedia story producer, which means nothing more than I have too many different positions for a more confined title. Anyway, as a producer, I have been working for the last seven years on establishing the groundwork for an interactive Transmedia Narrative Series. This series is being produced through the technique of telling a single story across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies to tell a single connected story. Now, something neat about Transmedia Storytelling is that the audience becomes involved in the story, being able to interact with characters through social media and other such avenues. The audience becomes a stakeholder in the experience alongside the characters themselves. The cool "unfolding" story design of Transmedia Storytelling creates motivation for the public to engage in the story, to seek out other pieces of the story, and contribute to the narrative themselves. Transmedia stories break down the walls between a story and the audience's reality by bringing the narrative story into the real world letting people engage with story elements and characters using the real-world as part of the story.
So, the S.C TreeHouse team and I have been creating the groundworks for Transmedia Narrative Stories that have footholds in not only film and TV, but books, YouTube, blogs, games, and more. This multimedia reach has allowed us to connect with a much broader audience, opening the doors to many more opportunities to work with all kinds of storytellers. Our purpose behind making Transmedia Narrative Stories is to encourage and teach others to do the same.
Yeah, that's the short of it...
Anyway, moving on. Exposition, let's go!
Okay, so, about nine...ish years ago my family and I founded S.C. TreeHouse as a film production company that could offer undiscovered filmmakers a chance to work on larger film crews. However, we quickly realized that it was not just filmmakers we had the opportunity to help, but we had the chance to reach out to all kinds of storytellers. Thus we reconstructed ourselves to be one of the oddest Transmedia Storytelling companies in the world. Being a Transmedia Storytelling company has given us a really unique opportunity to work with and help all kinds of storytellers from across the globe.
So, my job at S.C. TreeHouse is that of a transmedia story producer, which means nothing more than I have too many different positions for a more confined title. Anyway, as a producer, I have been working for the last seven years on establishing the groundwork for an interactive Transmedia Narrative Series. This series is being produced through the technique of telling a single story across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies to tell a single connected story. Now, something neat about Transmedia Storytelling is that the audience becomes involved in the story, being able to interact with characters through social media and other such avenues. The audience becomes a stakeholder in the experience alongside the characters themselves. The cool "unfolding" story design of Transmedia Storytelling creates motivation for the public to engage in the story, to seek out other pieces of the story, and contribute to the narrative themselves. Transmedia stories break down the walls between a story and the audience's reality by bringing the narrative story into the real world letting people engage with story elements and characters using the real-world as part of the story.
So, the S.C TreeHouse team and I have been creating the groundworks for Transmedia Narrative Stories that have footholds in not only film and TV, but books, YouTube, blogs, games, and more. This multimedia reach has allowed us to connect with a much broader audience, opening the doors to many more opportunities to work with all kinds of storytellers. Our purpose behind making Transmedia Narrative Stories is to encourage and teach others to do the same.
Yeah, that's the short of it...
The Long
How did I get here? Well...
Throughout all time, in the deep parts of people’s minds, something shifts when a story is told, and as history dictates, this has always eliminated the path to the future. Humanity resides on the ever-rickety ledge of change waiting to be pushed by the actions of not many, but only a few. The truth is, for one to survive the future they must understand this; things will change, not at the callous hands of the mighty, but by the wiry words of a story.
Everyone has a start, and for me, that was in 1997. My story began on a cold winter’s day in a Mississippi hospital. I did not stay in Mississippi for long though. When I was three, my family moved to Cleveland, Tennessee so my dad could do mission work on the Ocoee River.
Most of my early adventures occurred in our first Tennessee home on Chatata Valley Road. Whenever my siblings and I would play games, we always played them as if they were movies, plays, or television shows. We had this one game where we were fairies who went to a fairy school. While playing, we tended to use phrases such as, "And then it goes to" or "Then we go to a scene of.” We would jump ahead in time to whenever we wanted the next scene to take place. My siblings and I would do that same thing when we told stories. We would say things like "Tonight we are going to sneak out. And then it goes to a scene of us asleep, and we wake up to a thunderstorm” (much like a script). Call me strange, but that's what we did.
Ever since I can remember whenever I would do something, such as jump off the top step of our porch (which by the way is the most exciting thing a five-year-old can do), I would see, in my mind, me doing that same thing but from different camera angles. I would see a close up of my feet as I ran to jump off the porch then as soon as my feet left the ground I would see a wide shot of me in slow motion as I flew through the air. I would envision another close up as my feet touched the ground again.
See what I mean by I’m one of the craziest people I know?
One thing that I believe shaped my thinking and imagination is television. However, it is not like you might think. The only time our TV came on (when we had one) was so we could watch it. We never had the TV playing in the background as we did something else or when we were going to sleep. If the TV was on everyone sat down and gave it their full attention until it was turned off. If dad wanted to watch the news, everyone sat and watched it with him. TV time was a part of family time. We all sat down and laughed at or critiqued what we were watching. Now, you can imagine how this creates problems at a friend’s house or a restaurant if the TV plays in the background! TV time was special. It did not happen all the time, only rarely. So, it was savored and enjoyed.
When I was 9-years-old, my Dad built a treehouse for my siblings and me. Most kids with a treehouse pretend that it is a spaceship, helicopter, or merely the hideout for some club. However, that is not for what we used our treehouse. Our treehouse was a TV station. That's right, we did not pretend we were lost on an island, like Robinson Crusoe, or that we had flown to Neverland with Peter Pan. Our treehouse was “Christian Network,” an imaginary TV station. For those of you wondering, we were not obsessed with watching television, on the contrary, we did not even have a TV in our home. Okay, we did have a TV, but all it could do was play VHS cassettes on it. We could not pick up any TV stations (especially after everything went digital).
P.S. We did not even own a DVD player.
So, what made us imagine our treehouse as a TV station? I have no clue, the only thing I can think of (and believe me I have tried to figure it out) is that God put that desire in us to make films for His glory. He was using our treehouse to lead us in that direction.
“Christian Network” was my first interest in films and it did not stop there. Later in fall of 2006, my family and I made our first film with me as the editor, director, and writer of the "somewhat script." I know you probably think that this was just some sort of home movie and to an extent, it was, however, at the same time it was not. Some of the ways we made this film were not the ways a typical home movie would be made. For instance, it took us over a week to film. Now I know that is no time in the real film industry, but for a home movie, it is quite a bit of time. My siblings and I also took our own money and bought some props. That is correct. At ages 11, 9, 7, and 5 my siblings and I purchased props for our home movie. These props were not toys that we could keep and play with later. They were things like glow sticks, you know, one-time use stuff. We also attained some costumes and found locations around our 8-acre yard to use for our sets. As little kids, we took that home movie very seriously. We did retakes even though the camera work was just our dad following us around holding the camera. If we didn't like a shot we asked Dad to do something else and we re-filmed it. In our minds, that home movie was going to air on our TreeHouse TV station for all the world to see. Of course, that never happened. However, once we finished the film, we showed it to our grandparents and a good friend of the family. Those were the only people to ever see it.
Skip with me if you will to the end of 2006, Christmas to be precise. After the events of the last year and the experience of making that home movie my parents decided to get me a video camera. This was not one of those flip video cameras, but a full fledge Sony Handy Cam equipped with low light, night vision, outdoor and indoor settings, and recorded both 8mm and super 8 tapes. Unfortunately, it was a used camera and only lasted for a short time before dying. Even so, that camera sparked an idea in me that I would not share with anyone for seven more years.
For the next 2 years, my siblings and I made all kinds of videos and films for our TreeHouse TV station with a friend's camera. It was during this time that we came up with many of the characters still used in our movies and short films today.
In early 2009, my siblings and I made yet another home movie for our TreeHouse TV station. After one night of filming, we sat down to talk about how the rest of the film would play out. As we discussed the idea kind of hit me, "If we had a full-fledged written script it would make things a lot easier." At that moment, my siblings and I graduated from home movies to "Ultra Low Budget" films. Shortly after we formed S.C. TreeHouse Productions. For the rest of 2009 until the beginning of 2010, I worked on writing and re-writing the script for what was believed to be a 45-minute film entitled Beyond Under.
In mid-2010, I finished the script. It had changed so much from the original idea that it was now an entirely different film. When Autumn rolled around, we had our leading and supporting cast and production began. For the next six months, we filmed almost every week except holidays.
When post-production began, I quickly realized that Beyond Under was going to be much longer than our original 45-minute idea. At the premiere, Beyond Under was a 95-minute feature film that included a cast of almost 100 volunteers.
Beyond Under offered me my first opportunity to work with better equipment. My family and I raised funds through selling scrap metal and other various activities to purchase a $700 Canon Vixia HFM 30 digital camcorder (don't laugh, it was my first real film) as well as a Rode microphone and necessary lighting equipment. Initially, the script for Beyond Under suggested a 45-minute run time. At the end of post-production, it was a 90-minute feature film with a cast including about 60 extras. Beyond Under also was the first release by S.C. TreeHouse Productions, the production company, started by my family and me. Since then filmmaking has
become a family affair.
In July 2011, two months after the premiere of Beyond Under, I began writing another screenplay for a short film we entitled BOO! Do Something. For the next 8 months, I wrote on the script and my family, and I gathered supplies and costumes as well as secured filming locations.
When I was working on Boo! Do Something I also began dreaming of more significant projects I wanted to tackle someday. Not long after BOO! was started I went on a trip with some friends to historical Rugby, TN. During the ride, we began to play the alphabet game, in which you search for the letters of the alphabet on the titles of street signs. Riley Peak, the composer of much of my film’s music, and I were looking for the next letter of the alphabet when we saw a street sign that read "Knighthood LN." I turned to Riley and said, "That's an epic movie title, 'The KnightHood.'" Right then and there we decided that The KnightHood should be a movie and someday we were going to make it.
At the end of the summer of 2011, my dad resigned his seven-year position as a camp director and walked away with no other job or idea of how he would find one. I know what you are probably thinking. "Smart move there." And, you are right. It was a smart move. My dad had some theological differences with other leaders in that position and staying would have meant going against what he believed. My dad showed me that day that what you believe is far more important than any job. He showed me how to step out on faith even when you know if you do there is no turning back. My dad, to this day, is still doing odd jobs just to provide for us. Yet we've never missed a meal. The LORD is sustaining us.
On April 15, 2012, we held our first extras casting call for BOO! Do Something and in May filming began. Three months later the film won the first-place narrative prize at the 2012 National Film Fest 4H in Branson, MO. On the 26th of August over 200 people witnessed the official premiere from the small Tennessee town of Delano. BOO! went on to show at several churches and homeschool groups. By the end of 2012, there were over 250 BOO! DVDs sold around the world.
After producing Beyond Under and BOO! Do Something, back to back, my family and I decided to take a break, a little breather. Of course, I could not stop making movies altogether so during this time I began to think and plan for S.C. TreeHouse Productions' next film. Thus, The Knighthood script became a reality. But we will come back to that.
In September 2013, after almost a year of no large-scale film projects, a local church contacted my siblings and me about creating a children’s stage play to tell the story of our Savior’s birth from a more Jewish-minded perspective. Being that we had not done a sizeable creative endeavor in almost a year, we jumped at the opportunity. As we worked on some of the concepts for the play (we eventually titled The Checklist), the idea for a Pilgrim’s Progress style court case began to form in my mind. I sat it aside knowing it was not what was needed for the Christmas play. Little did we know what the idea would soon become...
2014 marked the 5-year anniversary of my family's production company S.C. TreeHouse Productions. We knew we did not have the funds to start another feature film. However, you only have a 5-year anniversary once, so we had to do something...but what? That is when we remembered the idea for the Pilgrim’s Progress style court case. I also thought of an idea I had thrown around for some time about doing a web-series. "What if we made a web-series about what we believed as a production company?” It would be our statement of faith. That is when the two ideas merged, and project Literal: What We Believe was born.
Filming for Literal began in early June 2014, and the first episode premiered later in August. During that of creating Literal, I shared with my friends and family, for the first time, my idea I had been forming since 2006, an idea concerning what I called The Master’s Story. The Master’s Story is a transmedia story, it is a weaving of all the story projects I had done into one master storyline. I’ve been working on that ever since.
At the beginning of 2015, after producing a web-series about what we believed as a production company, I decided to take some time away from filming to consult God on what we should be as a company. I wanted to ask God what the mission was He had for us, to sit down and plan with God the next steps to take....
Dearing that time, I finished up high school and headed off to college. I was a self-proclaimed bigshot than, I had made a future film at 13-years-old, won some awards, and had appeared on the front page of newspapers. So, when it came to picking a college, I knew I could get into something “highbrow” if I tried. And I did. In the summer semester of 2015 I walked into Nashville’s esteemed private art college, Watkins: College of Art and Film, as part of the 49% of students who had applied and actually made it to those front doors. One semester later, I walked out of Watkins with a 4.00 GPA, having learned very little, and ultimately broke.
After seeking much advice on the subject, I decided not to return to Watkins the following semester, but instead, took the last little bit of money I had and registered S.C. TreeHouse Productions as an official Limited Liability Company. What happened was amazing. God showed me just a glimpse of what He had planned for this simple dream He gave me as a 9 years old boy sitting in a Treehouse. God gave me a plan for a business, a business that was dedicated to telling the story of how He is working in the world today. This was the birth of S.C. TreeHouse LLC.
6 months later, at the start of 2016, I was producing over new 30 projects and had become the creator of the second fastest growing Transmedia Story in the world. Unfortunately, I was utterly clueless as to what I was doing running a business. I was a 19-year-old college dropout who had gone from making films with his family to operating one of the world’s most complex Transmedia Stories…overnight.
I won’t lie, 2016 was a hard year, but, I think in the end I would call it a win. For being only 19 and taking the “fake it ‘till you make it” approach way too literally, a lot worse could have happened. I did almost lose the entire Master’s Story twice to people trying to steal it (however, apparently, I am an overachiever when it comes to paperwork, so that saved my skin!) but we all pulled through.
So, 2016 ended we me half dead, only 2 of the 30 projects we had started not getting delayed, almost 30 employees dreading what the future would be, and S.C. TreeHouse LLC on the verge of exploding into flames.
Enter 2017.
After barely cheating corporate death in 2016, I knew I needed help. Thus, I decided I would go back to college. But this time, I wasn’t going to stroke my ego. I didn’t need a “highbrow” school to make me look smart, I needed to learn, clean and simple. I had reached the point that I could see I wasn’t some hotshot, I was just a kid, still too young to drink, and still with a lot to learn. Thus, I pick a college this time I felt could teach me what I needed to learn. And in August of 2017, I set foot on the campus.
So, what’s the take away here?
As you can tell, I’ve never played by the rules, I have always written my own. And in doing this, I’ve learned many things through the years, but the most noteworthy is that I’ve learned what I want to do. My journey has had many bumps in the road, however, every time I hit a new bump, it fuels me to try harder, and being a Storyteller encourages that. I see now that if one chooses to let God use every day and what that entails as a chance to be taught and humbled, they may never know it all, but they shall die the most wise. That is what I plan to do, die wise.
So, what do I want to do? Isn’t that obverse? I’m a Storyteller, I want to change the world for the glory of the one who created it.
P.S. That's The End...for now!
Everyone has a start, and for me, that was in 1997. My story began on a cold winter’s day in a Mississippi hospital. I did not stay in Mississippi for long though. When I was three, my family moved to Cleveland, Tennessee so my dad could do mission work on the Ocoee River.
Most of my early adventures occurred in our first Tennessee home on Chatata Valley Road. Whenever my siblings and I would play games, we always played them as if they were movies, plays, or television shows. We had this one game where we were fairies who went to a fairy school. While playing, we tended to use phrases such as, "And then it goes to" or "Then we go to a scene of.” We would jump ahead in time to whenever we wanted the next scene to take place. My siblings and I would do that same thing when we told stories. We would say things like "Tonight we are going to sneak out. And then it goes to a scene of us asleep, and we wake up to a thunderstorm” (much like a script). Call me strange, but that's what we did.
Ever since I can remember whenever I would do something, such as jump off the top step of our porch (which by the way is the most exciting thing a five-year-old can do), I would see, in my mind, me doing that same thing but from different camera angles. I would see a close up of my feet as I ran to jump off the porch then as soon as my feet left the ground I would see a wide shot of me in slow motion as I flew through the air. I would envision another close up as my feet touched the ground again.
See what I mean by I’m one of the craziest people I know?
One thing that I believe shaped my thinking and imagination is television. However, it is not like you might think. The only time our TV came on (when we had one) was so we could watch it. We never had the TV playing in the background as we did something else or when we were going to sleep. If the TV was on everyone sat down and gave it their full attention until it was turned off. If dad wanted to watch the news, everyone sat and watched it with him. TV time was a part of family time. We all sat down and laughed at or critiqued what we were watching. Now, you can imagine how this creates problems at a friend’s house or a restaurant if the TV plays in the background! TV time was special. It did not happen all the time, only rarely. So, it was savored and enjoyed.
When I was 9-years-old, my Dad built a treehouse for my siblings and me. Most kids with a treehouse pretend that it is a spaceship, helicopter, or merely the hideout for some club. However, that is not for what we used our treehouse. Our treehouse was a TV station. That's right, we did not pretend we were lost on an island, like Robinson Crusoe, or that we had flown to Neverland with Peter Pan. Our treehouse was “Christian Network,” an imaginary TV station. For those of you wondering, we were not obsessed with watching television, on the contrary, we did not even have a TV in our home. Okay, we did have a TV, but all it could do was play VHS cassettes on it. We could not pick up any TV stations (especially after everything went digital).
P.S. We did not even own a DVD player.
So, what made us imagine our treehouse as a TV station? I have no clue, the only thing I can think of (and believe me I have tried to figure it out) is that God put that desire in us to make films for His glory. He was using our treehouse to lead us in that direction.
“Christian Network” was my first interest in films and it did not stop there. Later in fall of 2006, my family and I made our first film with me as the editor, director, and writer of the "somewhat script." I know you probably think that this was just some sort of home movie and to an extent, it was, however, at the same time it was not. Some of the ways we made this film were not the ways a typical home movie would be made. For instance, it took us over a week to film. Now I know that is no time in the real film industry, but for a home movie, it is quite a bit of time. My siblings and I also took our own money and bought some props. That is correct. At ages 11, 9, 7, and 5 my siblings and I purchased props for our home movie. These props were not toys that we could keep and play with later. They were things like glow sticks, you know, one-time use stuff. We also attained some costumes and found locations around our 8-acre yard to use for our sets. As little kids, we took that home movie very seriously. We did retakes even though the camera work was just our dad following us around holding the camera. If we didn't like a shot we asked Dad to do something else and we re-filmed it. In our minds, that home movie was going to air on our TreeHouse TV station for all the world to see. Of course, that never happened. However, once we finished the film, we showed it to our grandparents and a good friend of the family. Those were the only people to ever see it.
Skip with me if you will to the end of 2006, Christmas to be precise. After the events of the last year and the experience of making that home movie my parents decided to get me a video camera. This was not one of those flip video cameras, but a full fledge Sony Handy Cam equipped with low light, night vision, outdoor and indoor settings, and recorded both 8mm and super 8 tapes. Unfortunately, it was a used camera and only lasted for a short time before dying. Even so, that camera sparked an idea in me that I would not share with anyone for seven more years.
For the next 2 years, my siblings and I made all kinds of videos and films for our TreeHouse TV station with a friend's camera. It was during this time that we came up with many of the characters still used in our movies and short films today.
In early 2009, my siblings and I made yet another home movie for our TreeHouse TV station. After one night of filming, we sat down to talk about how the rest of the film would play out. As we discussed the idea kind of hit me, "If we had a full-fledged written script it would make things a lot easier." At that moment, my siblings and I graduated from home movies to "Ultra Low Budget" films. Shortly after we formed S.C. TreeHouse Productions. For the rest of 2009 until the beginning of 2010, I worked on writing and re-writing the script for what was believed to be a 45-minute film entitled Beyond Under.
In mid-2010, I finished the script. It had changed so much from the original idea that it was now an entirely different film. When Autumn rolled around, we had our leading and supporting cast and production began. For the next six months, we filmed almost every week except holidays.
When post-production began, I quickly realized that Beyond Under was going to be much longer than our original 45-minute idea. At the premiere, Beyond Under was a 95-minute feature film that included a cast of almost 100 volunteers.
Beyond Under offered me my first opportunity to work with better equipment. My family and I raised funds through selling scrap metal and other various activities to purchase a $700 Canon Vixia HFM 30 digital camcorder (don't laugh, it was my first real film) as well as a Rode microphone and necessary lighting equipment. Initially, the script for Beyond Under suggested a 45-minute run time. At the end of post-production, it was a 90-minute feature film with a cast including about 60 extras. Beyond Under also was the first release by S.C. TreeHouse Productions, the production company, started by my family and me. Since then filmmaking has
become a family affair.
In July 2011, two months after the premiere of Beyond Under, I began writing another screenplay for a short film we entitled BOO! Do Something. For the next 8 months, I wrote on the script and my family, and I gathered supplies and costumes as well as secured filming locations.
When I was working on Boo! Do Something I also began dreaming of more significant projects I wanted to tackle someday. Not long after BOO! was started I went on a trip with some friends to historical Rugby, TN. During the ride, we began to play the alphabet game, in which you search for the letters of the alphabet on the titles of street signs. Riley Peak, the composer of much of my film’s music, and I were looking for the next letter of the alphabet when we saw a street sign that read "Knighthood LN." I turned to Riley and said, "That's an epic movie title, 'The KnightHood.'" Right then and there we decided that The KnightHood should be a movie and someday we were going to make it.
At the end of the summer of 2011, my dad resigned his seven-year position as a camp director and walked away with no other job or idea of how he would find one. I know what you are probably thinking. "Smart move there." And, you are right. It was a smart move. My dad had some theological differences with other leaders in that position and staying would have meant going against what he believed. My dad showed me that day that what you believe is far more important than any job. He showed me how to step out on faith even when you know if you do there is no turning back. My dad, to this day, is still doing odd jobs just to provide for us. Yet we've never missed a meal. The LORD is sustaining us.
On April 15, 2012, we held our first extras casting call for BOO! Do Something and in May filming began. Three months later the film won the first-place narrative prize at the 2012 National Film Fest 4H in Branson, MO. On the 26th of August over 200 people witnessed the official premiere from the small Tennessee town of Delano. BOO! went on to show at several churches and homeschool groups. By the end of 2012, there were over 250 BOO! DVDs sold around the world.
After producing Beyond Under and BOO! Do Something, back to back, my family and I decided to take a break, a little breather. Of course, I could not stop making movies altogether so during this time I began to think and plan for S.C. TreeHouse Productions' next film. Thus, The Knighthood script became a reality. But we will come back to that.
In September 2013, after almost a year of no large-scale film projects, a local church contacted my siblings and me about creating a children’s stage play to tell the story of our Savior’s birth from a more Jewish-minded perspective. Being that we had not done a sizeable creative endeavor in almost a year, we jumped at the opportunity. As we worked on some of the concepts for the play (we eventually titled The Checklist), the idea for a Pilgrim’s Progress style court case began to form in my mind. I sat it aside knowing it was not what was needed for the Christmas play. Little did we know what the idea would soon become...
2014 marked the 5-year anniversary of my family's production company S.C. TreeHouse Productions. We knew we did not have the funds to start another feature film. However, you only have a 5-year anniversary once, so we had to do something...but what? That is when we remembered the idea for the Pilgrim’s Progress style court case. I also thought of an idea I had thrown around for some time about doing a web-series. "What if we made a web-series about what we believed as a production company?” It would be our statement of faith. That is when the two ideas merged, and project Literal: What We Believe was born.
Filming for Literal began in early June 2014, and the first episode premiered later in August. During that of creating Literal, I shared with my friends and family, for the first time, my idea I had been forming since 2006, an idea concerning what I called The Master’s Story. The Master’s Story is a transmedia story, it is a weaving of all the story projects I had done into one master storyline. I’ve been working on that ever since.
At the beginning of 2015, after producing a web-series about what we believed as a production company, I decided to take some time away from filming to consult God on what we should be as a company. I wanted to ask God what the mission was He had for us, to sit down and plan with God the next steps to take....
Dearing that time, I finished up high school and headed off to college. I was a self-proclaimed bigshot than, I had made a future film at 13-years-old, won some awards, and had appeared on the front page of newspapers. So, when it came to picking a college, I knew I could get into something “highbrow” if I tried. And I did. In the summer semester of 2015 I walked into Nashville’s esteemed private art college, Watkins: College of Art and Film, as part of the 49% of students who had applied and actually made it to those front doors. One semester later, I walked out of Watkins with a 4.00 GPA, having learned very little, and ultimately broke.
After seeking much advice on the subject, I decided not to return to Watkins the following semester, but instead, took the last little bit of money I had and registered S.C. TreeHouse Productions as an official Limited Liability Company. What happened was amazing. God showed me just a glimpse of what He had planned for this simple dream He gave me as a 9 years old boy sitting in a Treehouse. God gave me a plan for a business, a business that was dedicated to telling the story of how He is working in the world today. This was the birth of S.C. TreeHouse LLC.
6 months later, at the start of 2016, I was producing over new 30 projects and had become the creator of the second fastest growing Transmedia Story in the world. Unfortunately, I was utterly clueless as to what I was doing running a business. I was a 19-year-old college dropout who had gone from making films with his family to operating one of the world’s most complex Transmedia Stories…overnight.
I won’t lie, 2016 was a hard year, but, I think in the end I would call it a win. For being only 19 and taking the “fake it ‘till you make it” approach way too literally, a lot worse could have happened. I did almost lose the entire Master’s Story twice to people trying to steal it (however, apparently, I am an overachiever when it comes to paperwork, so that saved my skin!) but we all pulled through.
So, 2016 ended we me half dead, only 2 of the 30 projects we had started not getting delayed, almost 30 employees dreading what the future would be, and S.C. TreeHouse LLC on the verge of exploding into flames.
Enter 2017.
After barely cheating corporate death in 2016, I knew I needed help. Thus, I decided I would go back to college. But this time, I wasn’t going to stroke my ego. I didn’t need a “highbrow” school to make me look smart, I needed to learn, clean and simple. I had reached the point that I could see I wasn’t some hotshot, I was just a kid, still too young to drink, and still with a lot to learn. Thus, I pick a college this time I felt could teach me what I needed to learn. And in August of 2017, I set foot on the campus.
So, what’s the take away here?
As you can tell, I’ve never played by the rules, I have always written my own. And in doing this, I’ve learned many things through the years, but the most noteworthy is that I’ve learned what I want to do. My journey has had many bumps in the road, however, every time I hit a new bump, it fuels me to try harder, and being a Storyteller encourages that. I see now that if one chooses to let God use every day and what that entails as a chance to be taught and humbled, they may never know it all, but they shall die the most wise. That is what I plan to do, die wise.
So, what do I want to do? Isn’t that obverse? I’m a Storyteller, I want to change the world for the glory of the one who created it.
P.S. That's The End...for now!
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