Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kenlon Clark. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kenlon , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I’ve loved storytelling in one form or another my entire life. Even as a small child I have little books that I drew, as I was just learning to read and write that are the equivalent to action films on paper in an embryonic state. Growing up, I loved comic books, science fiction novels, and drawing. When I became a teenager I loved making my own films with my parent’s VHS camera and managed to win a scholarship to film school for an animation I drew on a whiteboard. I was lucky to have a supportive family, and parents who did what they could to give me opportunities even though we had zero connections to the art or film world. When I was a teenager the Canadian Screen Institute held a filmmaking summer camp in Edmonton Alberta called NHTV that provided teens with the opportunity to write, direct, edit, and premiere their own films. I was an actor and a producer over the two years that I participated, and learned a lot of techniques that I still use in my work today. My parents also bought a computer that was able to edit video. This is in the 90’s when the entire hard drive space was 1 GB and it had only 16mb of memory. But it allowed me to begin editing digitally long before that became the norm.
In some ways, my purpose found me at an early age, but the key is that I was encouraged and personally driven to continue to foster it over the years. I’ve never let go of how much life is infused in me when it comes to working on a project. I followed the love of storytelling into commercial work, music videos, and film and television over the years. I believe our ‘purpose’ in life tries to reveal itself to us, and the trick is to follow that intuition and develop it, while not putting a ton of pressure on yourself. As you approach it with a love of the process over the result, you’ll get better at it and opportunities will emerge to hopefully find a way to make a career out of it, if that’s what you want to happen.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I have been obsessed with movies for as long as I can remember. The first film that really grabbed me was Tim Burton’s Batman film in 1989. Many other action films over the years, but Michael Bay’s Bad Boys was also a big influence on me. Everything I’ve directed over the years probably has some DNA of those two films working in them somewhere. Although there have been people in my family with some artistic proclivity, none had pursued it as a profession. However, I’ve wanted to make films and tell stories my entire life and knew it was what I had to do. Getting there is another challenge but I knew I wanted to make films. I loved drawing over the years, acting, and writing, and I even won quite a few writing contests growing up. Filmmaking lets an artist combine those disparate loves into one form, and so it was almost a gravitational pull that lead me to making films.
I grew up with a camera in my hand, running around the neighborhood shooting films on VHS with my friends. I won a scholarship to film school in high school, and eventually attended the Victoria Motion Picture School on Vancouver Island, BC. At the school, I wrote and directed a superhero film (before they were super popular) called Housecoat Man, about a superhero who fights crime in his bathrobe going through an identity crisis. That film was selected to be aired and reviewed on national television in Canada on a channel called YTV.
Eventually, I moved to LA and worked in music videos, and some corporate films for a few years, eventually directing all seven music videos for the grammy-nominated album “We Are All We Need” for EDM phenom’s Above & Beyond. I directed more music videos for Warner Records, Atlantic Records, as well as an independent sci-fi thriller called Synapse. I won on a few screenwriting contests which lead me to working on visionary filmmaker Adi Shankar’s Netflix series “The Guardians of Justice”. I directed, edited and narrated episodes of that series which premiered at the Canneseries festival in 2021.
My focus over the years, has been trying to put thought and effort into pulling as much from a story as possible. That is one of the aspects of the pre-production process I love. It’s the opportunity to think stories through. That being said, you also need to be instinctual and be prepared to follow inspiration as you go, so there is a creative tight-rope you have to walk which is part of the thrill of storytelling.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I was able to practice my craft without a lot of outside influence. Back in the day and living in a small town, information flow was limited and I was mostly reduced to just watching movies, and then trying to replicate what I saw on my own. The ‘how to’ wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now with things like Youtube, so it forced my mind to creatively reverse engineer how things were done. I wasn’t bombarded with a lot of comparisons to other people’s work, other than actual Hollywood filmmakers. And although what I was doing was by comparison infinitesimal, eventually it started to edge a little bit closer. I would recommend to anyone exploring a passion to take a bit of the ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach and allow yourself to experiment and fail on your own. You will begin to figure it out and train your mind to solve problems along the way which is the core of creativity.
I think recognizing the parts of the process of whatever job or industry you’re working in that really get you excited is important. Remembering what made you want to do it in the first place and keeping that well guarded. It will be those parts that keep you up when the other real world aspects drag you back a bit. To work in a creative field you have to be able to withstand and learn from criticism at every turn. To handle that, just go back into the areas you love to reenergize yourself. If that’s writing, find a story that gets you excited. If it’s photography, go film something that you love to see. It’s all about tapping back into that original, almost child-like desire, that doesn’t even know the outside world exists. That ‘child-like’ desire will fortify you when life’s complications become overwhelming.
Now to balance out the ‘ignorance is bliss’ aspect, it’s important to find people who know areas you don’t and learn from them. As much as I love all aspects of filmmaking, there is only so much time in life to focus on certain areas. Others will have focused on the areas you may be weak in so learn from them and maintain humility along the way. Life is a process of learning, and there’s an infinite amount of knowledge out there, but the process can be fast forwarded by learning from others who have experiences you don’t. Find those people and let them teach you.
What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?
I’ve heard many stories from people pursuing creative passions that had parents try to talk them out of it. I can understand that, as a creative life is filled with non stop high’s and low’s. There’s almost no steady equilibrium to it and it’s a constant balancing act. But never once in my life did my parents attempt to talk me out of it. They always believed in me, and encouraged me, finding opportunities to develop my talents any way they could. They made incredible sacrifices for me and it was never lost on me. We were a middle-class family without connections to that creative world, but that never stopped them from encouraging me to follow my dreams. They believed in me, and filled me with confidence. I think there are a lot of opportunities in this world, more so than when I was starting out, so I would encourage any parents who have kids who really have a passion for something, to do what they can to help them grow. If they get good at it at an early age, people will notice and step in to help them as well. That confidence is crucial.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kenlonclark.com
- Instagram: @KenlonClark
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenlon-clark-0ab30a98/
