Swimming in Darkwater

I finished film school in 2011 and somehow didn’t wander around aimlessly looking for what to do next.

Instead, I got hired.

Darkwater Productions and Casting Call were small, independent production companies in Las Vegas, and at the time they felt like the center of everything.

For me, it was a dream job in the most literal sense. I was allowed to write, direct, shoot, edit, and score projects. I took on clients as I saw fit. I made demo reels for actors, and short films for writers.

It was a freedom that I had always craved.

Before that, my relationship with film had been largely academic and aspirational. I’d gotten my first IMDb credit working on a short film while still in school, and another as a key PA on Stealing Las Vegas. Those moments mattered and they felt like proof, but working at Darkwater was different. It wasn’t about single credits. It was about volume, consistency, and trust.

I worked with a lot of people. Actors just starting out. Actors reinventing themselves. Writers testing ideas. Directors figuring out how to speak clearly through a camera. That constant interaction wove me into the city art scene in a way I hadn’t expected. Las Vegas wasn’t known for its film scene at the time, but it always had one. It’s quiet, stubborn, and deeply collaborative and being inside it taught me how work actually moves through a place.

At some point, I was also asked to teach.

I taught a film theory class, and at the end of it, we made films together. Teaching didn’t feel like stepping away from making. It felt like learning how to articulate instincts I’d been relying on without naming.

I would go on to make more projects, meet interesting people, and get involved in events that just some short time ago seemed like only a fantasy.

Years later, while I was living in China, Darkwater and Casting Call were rebranded as Samara Entertainment. I wasn’t there when it happened. That seems to be a pattern in my life, things shifting while I’m elsewhere, mid-movement.

But China brought its own chapter.

While I was there, I was invited by Samara to take part in the Genesis Education Film Program at the Dachang Film and Media Industrial Park outside Beijing. It was an educational initiative backed by Relativity Media and visual effects studio Base FX.

Being there felt like learning how to swim all over again. A place where everything was unfamiliar but deeply intentional. New expectations. New ways of thinking about collaboration, industry, and education. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I knew it even while I was living it.

Looking back now, that entire period, Darkwater, Casting Call, teaching, making films in Vegas, then suddenly finding myself so far away, feels less like a career ladder and more like immersion. I wasn’t moving upward so much as moving through. Learning how to stay afloat while paying attention to currents, pressure, and depth.

I didn’t come out of it with a single defining success story. I came out of it knowing how to make things, how to work with people, and how to trust process over outcome.

That’s what swimming in dark water teaches you.
You stop panicking about what you can’t see and start learning how to move anyway.