Today we’d like to introduce you to Dustin Serrano.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
2003-2007, I call my wasted years. Cause I did not take school seriously and I did things that I wasn’t supposed to be doing. It’s not until the end of 2007, I told my older cousin, Erek, what I wanted to do. Which was to be a filmmaker. He encouraged me to open up to my parents about this and have a real conversation with them. I did and to my surprise, they accepted this. Because growing up, my parents wanted me to work in the medical field because of jobs always being in demand in that field. But I knew that was not for me.
2008, I decided to go back to school. I wanted to be a filmmaker, so, I decided to go to Palomar College and do all my prerequisite to transfer to a four-year university. In 2012, I transfer to the University of California, Santa Cruz and I majored in Film and Digital Media with a concentration in production. Attending UCSC was one the best decisions I made and I don’t regret it. I made life long friends and I’m an alumnus of a great University. June of 2014 I graduated from UCSC and ready to enter the workplace. However, as a recent graduate, it’s difficult to get a paid gig. So, I did gigs for free to get experience but as I continued I did get paid gigs. August of 2014, I worked my first gig in LA as a production assistant for a movie called ‘Glimpse’. October of 2014 I was a production assistant for a production company in San Diego, Tallgrass Pictures. After that, I didn’t start working again until January of 2015. I got a part-time as a studio crew member for a news station at San Diego 6 The CW. My ultimate plan was to continue to live at my parent’s house rent free, work at the CW and freelance production gig. My goal was to save enough money to move to Los Angeles and find work there full time.
However, less than a month into the job personal tragedy strikes. Two-disc from my back pop out and start pushing up against my spine. I had no feeling on the bottom half of my body. I was scared to death. February of 2015 I had emergency back surgery. After surgery, I’m sent to a rehab hospital. What pushed me to get through rehab was thinking I had a job at the CW when I’d be ready. At least that’s what the director of the morning news told me. So I pushed myself. Even though after surgery I knew I’d never feel the same. To this day my feet are always feeling tingly after surgery. I have a drop foot on both feet requiring me to wear AFOs, ankle-foot orthosis. I am now considered physically disabled, but nowadays I’m not letting that affect me as I once did. Anyways, when I was ready to go back to work the director of the news show said I couldn’t because after not working for two months HR automatically released me and he knew nothing about it. This crushed me and I started to sulk. My sister, Jackie, basically told me to stop sulking and rehab even harder and when I’m ready to get back out there and find projects to work on even if they weren’t paid gigs. Since my injury I’ve assisted on an independent feature film, short films, edited videos for youtubers, edited videos for companies and helped produced a web video/commercial for an e-commerce company.
Please tell us about your art.
I guess you can say that I am a storyteller. I enjoy developing the concept of a story and creating a script out of it. Most of my stories stem from personal life experience because my thought is why not start off with something that’s personal to you. So I created stories on my personal life or stories around people I personally knew and created something based on them and what they’ve gone through. And others I create out of conversations I’ve had with people or ideas I have floating around my head.
Working on these narratives is therapeutic for me because when I’m writing, filming or editing I forget about everything. It’s as if I’m in a trance and no one or nothing can interrupt me. My physical ability is non-existent; my depression doesn’t exist when I’m working on a project. When I’m kept busy working on a project, I am at my happiest. What’s funny though is I like to create these narratives or documentaries, but I still, for some reason, get this shy feeling of watching people watch my work. I still get the butterflies in my stomach to where I want to hide knowing people are watching it. I’m fine with the feedback whether it’s positive or negative but I still get the nervousness when I premiere my work.
I feel my job as a filmmaker/storyteller is to evoke emotions out of the viewer. My job is to make you feel something whether it’s a positive reaction or a negative reaction. I want to make you voice your opinion. Is what I showed you relevant or something that’s not practical? I want to make people talk, make them think.
Lastly, I want people to realize that they can do anything they want to do. Don’t let you physically abilities or insecurities stop you. We all get that way, I still get that way, but if we live in our insecurities, we’ll never get things done.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
The role of an artist has definitely changed. Through art whether it be film, photography, paintings and etc. we are able to capture moments and are able to tell a quick story through them. A picture can say a thousand words. A painting can open up your eyes. A film will have you look at another perspective. A poem will open up your ears and hear the pain of others. Art will show you a whole different side of things.
In today’s climate artist are needed more than ever. For example, I usually don’t like talking about this, but look at politics. Our country is divided and we are fighting with each other and our government. Go look at pictures of kids getting separated from their parents, go look at videos of the protest and watch videos of candlelight vigils. Look at photos of the vigils. Through them, an artist is able to tell a story without saying a word. With a picture, an artist is able to tell the story through the eyes of a parent having to watch their child being taken away from them or they can show it from the side of the border patrol agents side. Depending on your beliefs you will feel heartbroken for the parents, or you’ll have the thought of the agent is just doing his job. The artist controls the narrative and will be able to dictate the story they want to tell.
My work is through the eye of a minority man. As a filmmaker, my goal is to show the relations between everyone no matter their color, gender or beliefs. For example, I did a passion project “IAMWE”. This is a short film documentary and through it, we are taken through the perspective of 3 different people. They are of different ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality and etc. The one thing that they all had in common is that they are or have in the past been a makeup artist. We see the confidence with their makeup on, but when we take the makeup away, there is a new perspective. Being a filmmaker teaches you about your surrounding and shows you a world through a different sense. We see something in front of us that’s been there the whole time, but we put a camera in front of us and we see something we’ve never really noticed before.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
You can find my work on my website, Vimeo or YouTube. The way people can support my work or anyone else work is by sharing our work on your page. Share them with friends, family, acquaintances and on all social media platform. Keep us in mind when projects come up. Help us with our projects through go fund me. For an artist, photographer or filmmaker that are independent the best way to help them is to fund their go fund me page, hire them for work or buy their prints. The more you support us, the more we are able to create.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dustinjohnserrano.com
- Email: djserrano72@gmail.com
- Instagram: djserrano72
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dustinserrano
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dustinserrano
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinserrano/
Image Credit:
Jackie Serrano, Dave Cosa Wilwayco, Olivia Johansen, Scott Baker & Alexis Duran
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