We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe Carabeo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Joe thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

This is always a funny question and I look at it from a musician pov. Since technically people are always saying, Joe I don’t understand how you do so many things, and thinking about it, it’s true, I do move in and out of a lot of creative universes, from writing whether is be for movies and also writing comic books in Curls Studio, a musician, which can consist or playing bass, guitar, drums and song writing in fog Industry, photography in all its forms and releasing my ASTRAY photo books and of course film making, working as a cinematographer and Director, it always comes back to something that I believe I heard one of my favorite musician’s Jack White talk about, and it was something in lines of great work comes from great struggle. And I feel like I took that to heart.

So in sick way, as creative, I felt that almost like being happy is counteractive towards making the best work. It’s almost like, if you’re happy, then you’ve settled, you have no place to go, that’s it. When the struggle is done, you’re just sitting watching the sunset, it’s over. Which in its self could be another struggle, finding the next purpose that motivates the creative. And maybe that’s why I do end up creating in different mediums, to keep the creative door open.

So I guess the real answer is, I’m happy and not happy at the same time. But I do enjoy the happy moments a lot, and I do think about what it would like if I didn’t work or live, or making a living like this and it motivates me to continue being a creative, because then if I didn’t, I would eventually grow frustrated and know I’m missing out, because I believe I have so much to give to people with these skills I have been given. And its heartbreaking to me or when I see anyone even myself not be able to fully know what they are capable of.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Joe Carabeo, I’m an award winning filmmaker, director, cinematographer, photographer, writer and I also have my own production company under the branding name Astray Productions. I earned a double major in Filmmaking and Photography from Virginia Commonwealth University, For over 15 years I have worked from the Beach Boys to Bono, to the CIA and Showtime. I can work in many different genres and cinematic forms from narratives, short and feature, to documentaries, music video, cooking shows and commercials, I am currently the program director of two of the biggest film festivals in the Washington DC area, Awesome Con Short Film Festival and DC Shorts International Film Festival.

What I think has always set me apart is my ability to have unlimited perspectives on every situation that will help us create the best solution for our goal with the ability to confidently executive any creative. I also try not to use negative words during a production and hopefully in life. I find by removing those verbal obstacles it helps to direct the flow to a positive place or at least challenge the negative energy that comes out a lot during high pressure situations. And hopefully that makes the environment more efficient to create something you’re happy to part of.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

When you’re young, you’re always told about the character of the starving artist, that artist do these things for free and that’s what artist do and that you can’t make a living being an artist, and you should like it enough that you should do it for free, etc etc. I learned that tale is a lie. Possibly as a disrespect. But art and art work is in everything we do.

Artist do hard work and should get paid and not taken advantage of and should be valued when the do work with and for others. It’s hard for a person who doesn’t know how to do a skill understand the years it took to create magic with the push of a record button, or shutter trigger on a camera, or beautiful straight line for an illustration, or a simple square in a design. but there is years that came before the developed that moment of magic and sometimes I feel there’s people out there that don’t appreciate that and bully your opportunity into zero or “happy to be here” pay.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Hilarious

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joecarabeo.com
• Instagram: @astrayj – @joecarabeo_photography – @directolink – @fog_industry – @awesomeconshortfilmfestival – @dcshorts – @carolynandjoeshow
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/astrayproductions/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joecarabeo/
• Twitter: @astrayj
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/astrayj
• Other: www.astrayproductions.com