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A couple of years later, I left my full-time job at BET to further pursue my interest in filmmaking. I worked on a variety of indie and Hollywood films shot in the Baltimore/Washington, DC regions. Between projects, I continued to freelance as a stage manager. I hustled up some local music videos, then produced some short films, including a half-hour, 16mm supernatural thriller entitled Mind Games. My co-producer and director, Jon Parks, was working at Henninger Video, a leading post facility in Virginia. With his connections we were able to edit using the brand new D-2 digital tape formats and an EMC editing system, one of the first nonlinear editing machines. A few years later, I co-produced Baltimore filmmaker Darryl Wharton’s debut feature film, Detention. The project was “an urban Breakfast Club” story about five very different students who are forced to face the problems in their lives when they spend an afternoon together with a dedicated teacher. The movie was shot on color Super 16mm film in twelve days. We got the film in the can for a little over $12,000 plus some debt and deferrals. However, Darryl had to raise far more to get the film to print. In fact, because of the high cost of Super 16mm blow-up to 35mm, he ultimately ended up getting a $14,000 16mm print made from his video cut of the film! This print has been screened at many festivals nationwide—The Urban World Film Festival, Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles and The Atlanta International Film Festival, just to name a few. Then, less six months after co-producing Detention, I made my writing and directing debut with my own feature, B. More Hacks. The film is about a day in the life of a group of illegal cab drivers and the characters they meet while working the streets of Baltimore. B. More Hacks was also filmed in color Super 16mm. The film broke several rules of low budget production by featuring over fifty speaking roles with the majority of the production taking place in cars traveling all over town. We were able to pull it off because I had learned a lot about shooting fast from working on music videos. Principal photography was completed over a tight, fourteen-day period, during a cold, east coast November. We got the film in the can for about $24,000, plus a lot of debt and deferrals. Additional money was invested to edit a rough cut of the film. I spent about a year working on the rough cut and trying to raise the $40,000 required to finish a film print of B. More Hacks. The work-in-progress received excellent feedback when it screened at the Independent Feature Film Market (IFFM) in New York, but I had no luck raising completion funds. However, I did establish fantastic relationships with several filmmaking professionals and companies, including Peter Broderick and his company Next Wave Films. Three years later they would provide financing for Paper Chasers. Encouraged by the feedback and contacts I made at the IFFM, I finally gave in and relocated to the Los Angeles area. It was time to head back West and politick (network) with some Hollywood folks.

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