How I Got Here

A non-traditional path through live production, experience design, and figuring things out before anyone asks.

Heartline Films

Co-owner & Lead Filmmaker · 2011–Present

200+ weddings filmed with my wife Haley. Designed every aspect of the client experience from booking through final delivery. Built the business, the brand, the workflows, and the reputation from scratch.

Last Looks Film

Founder · 2024–Present

Invented a service category: cinematic documentation of homes before families move. Built the brand, website, client process, and marketing strategy for a business that had no existing model to follow.

Cape Fear Games

Sales Floor + Internal Tools · 2023–Present

Hired for inventory work, moved to customer-facing sales. Built an iPad-based buyer kiosk as a full-stack web app (Node.js, Express, Socket.IO, vanilla JS); question tree, smart routing, Discord notifications, receipt printing, searchable interaction logs. Architected it to be white-label-ready for other retail shops.

Silicron Code

Founder; Designer; Developer · 2023–Present

Founded an iOS app development business; “Apps for Human Brains.” Self-taught Swift and SwiftUI. Designed, built, and shipped five iOS apps: Anemone (wedding day organizer), Triflow (ADHD task manager), Mako (shark tooth hunting), Volanote (note capture and review), and Handful (daily task limiter). Every app starts with the same question: how does the person actually use this, and where does it break down?

Board Game Design

Independent · 2022–Present

Four games in active development (Ichthyomancers, Neighborhood Crawler, Pixel Drifters, Unplayable Characters). Ongoing design practice in systems thinking and player psychology.

Battle House Laser Tag

The Everything-on-a-Computer Guy · 2018–2024

Started with a freelance video pitch. Ended up as the person who handled website management, photography, videography, graphic design, SEO, data entry, system troubleshooting, and eventually AI integration. Built the role from nothing into something they couldn't run without.

Tayloe/Gray

Lead Videographer · 2018

Took a desk job for the stability. Learned I'd rather be useful than comfortable. Left to find work that actually required me to think.

Life Church

Media Director · 2016–2018

Ran live production for weekly services. Real-time problem-solving on live broadcasts; preparation is invisible, mistakes are public, and the best work happens when nobody notices you doing it.

UNCW · Film Studies

BA, Graduated 2015

Studied filmmaking at UNC Wilmington. Learned to see the world in terms of composition, pacing, and emotional beats; a framework I still use for everything.

NHCS-TV

Production Intern · 2011

Senior year of high school. First exposure to live broadcast production; learned the discipline of getting it right when there's no second take.

Other things that inform how I work

Magic performance background · Misdirection, audience attention, pacing, reveal. A magician's whole job is making the complexity invisible.
Psychology studies · Formal study of how people think, decide, and feel. Shows up in everything from game design to client interactions.
Disney parks enthusiast · My wife was a Cast Member at Hollywood Studios. We honeymooned at Disney World. The way Disney designs every detail from the parking lot to the exit is the clearest version of invisible complexity I've encountered. It's the standard I hold other experiences to.

Skills (for the robots and recruiters who need a list)

Video: Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, documentary and event production

Photo: Lightroom, event and environmental photography

Design: Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma (learning)

Code: Swift, SwiftUI, SwiftData, Node.js, Express, HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Web: SEO, Google Ads, Reddit Ads, Google Analytics, email marketing

Mail: Mailchimp, email campaign design

Writing: Brand copy, storytelling, long-form, UX-adjacent

Other: Articulate, presentation design, process documentation