Today we’d like to introduce you to Kyle Taubken.
Hi Kyle, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I was always drawn to theater and literature in middle and high school. I also found myself pulled towards creative writing and harbored a deep impulse for personal expression, even if it was just for myself. In my junior and senior years of high school, I was regularly acting in plays and working with our school’s TV studio (a generous description of what was essentially a closet in the library). Once I got to undergrad and began considering what I should major in, I set out to explore every facet of media the college had to offer. At one point or another, I worked every job I could for the college’s TV station, radio station, and newspaper, majoring in Mass Media. Simultaneously, I was fostering an obsessive relationship with cinema, watching as many movies as I could get my hands on. It was both an escape and an education, providing me with windows into worlds and stories to which I’d never been exposed. Around age 20, the idea occurred to me to take the technical skills I’d been learning at the TV and radio stations and apply them towards an attempt at a narrative short film. The process of making my first short film was exhilarating. It took everything I’d been swimming in, movies, media production, and personal expression, and combined them all into one giant, messy medium. I was hooked. After college, I went to graduate school at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA, to study filmmaking more in-depth. After graduate school, I moved back to Memphis, where I worked for a small production company for a little while before making the leap into freelance full-time and continuing to make narrative work as a means of personal creative expression and storytelling. I am now developing my first feature film and continuing to press toward my goal of professionally writing and directing features.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely not! One of the biggest challenges has been balancing a full-time freelance business while continuing to make personal work. At some point, we all have to make a living. And figuring out how to do that in video production in a market like Memphis has been challenging. It’s also been gratifying, and I feel very blessed to work with clients I love while also having my narrative filmmaking embraced by festivals and folks both in and outside the city. With filmmaking specifically, an even tougher challenge has been working towards finding my place in the larger industry. The film industry is perfectly fine continuing to function without me or my work, both en masse and at the more independent level. Meaning I am not needed there. But I want to be there. So, what I have come to believe that I am working towards doing, and what anyone making personal work for larger audiences in any creative field is doing, is trying to carve out a tiny bit of space for what I do and my voice. You’ve got to make some elbow room for yourself in a very crowded place. And that’s incredibly difficult.
Please tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others. What are you most proud of?
I make personal narrative films that work to get at profound truths about the self and our relationships with others, often through intimate, character-driven stories that incorporate both the pain and beauty of the human experience. I almost always write, direct, produce, and edit this work. I am most proud of how I have watched the casts and crews of these films stretch themselves creatively and make work they are also proud to be a part of. Filmmaking is inherently and intensely collaborative. The friendships and creative partnerships I’ve enjoyed with all sorts of folks bring me immense joy and pride.
What are some apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
Books: Be Here Now by Ram Dass, On Writing by Stephen King, Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
Apps: Ten Percent Happier App, Apple Reminders
Podcasts: You Made It Weird w/ Pete Holmes, The Ezra Klein Show, Tig and Cheryl: True Story, The Director’s Cut, Insight Hour with Joseph Goldstein, Ram Dass Here And Now, Reply All (RIP), Unlocking Us with Brene Brown, Alan Watts Being In The Way, The Daily
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kyletaubken.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyletaubken
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kyletaubken
- Other: http://imdb.me/kyletaubken
Image Credits
Andrew Puccio, Emily Taubken, Indie Memphis Film Festival
