Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nicole Solomon. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nicole, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

By the time I was in third grade I knew I wanted to be either an actor, a rock star, or a writer, because music, movies and books were my passions. I knew I wanted to make art and tell stories, becauseThat was most of what I did with my free time, completing an over 100 page long sequel to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH at age 9, writing songs on our Casio keyboard and recording them to cassette, taking acting classes and auditioning for every school play. I didn’t think of being a director, simply because I didn’t know what that was, but by middle school I was attempting to adapt some of my favorite books into screenplays. Then I got into zines and DIY record labels and took a video production class at school and rarely looked back.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After learning the basics of 1990s video production in highschool and making a documentary about my sister’s punk rock band for my senior project, I went to college where I majored in Cultural Studies rather than film, and missed the shift to digital video. I continued to write and play music, but I started feeling that guitar was not my forte, and I missed video. I wanted to make video art, and documentaries, and music videos, and feature narratives, and I didn’t know how. So I signed up for a reasonably-priced Intro To Digital Video class at the wonderful Downtown Community Television here in New York City, and then intro to Final Cut Pro, and then I was accepted into their internship program which allowed me to take as many classes for free as I could fit in my schedule. I procured a copy of Final Cut Pro and put a Panasonic DVX-100b on a credit card and started taking simple gigs as a videographer to pay for it.

After a few years of that, I felt like I’d hit a wall with the one-man-band style of video production to which I’d become accustomed, and felt like I needed to expand my horizons and learn how to work with a crew. I also wanted to make video production central to my professional life, as opposed to a side hustle I felt I never had enough time for. I entered The City College of New York’s MFA program for writing and directing narrative fiction a little over a decade ago and have been working in video post/production (and teaching others how to do the same) full time ever since.

Today, I write, direct, produce, and edit, but not usually all of them at once for the same project. I also teach film and video production and postproduction at a few different schools and community organizations. Through our production company 4Milecircus, my business/producing (and sometimes writing) partner Sean Mannion and I make short and feature films, music videos, podcasts, and more. We make our own passion projects, as well as offering a range of video production and postproduction services to clients.

Sean and I have similar priorities when it comes to projects we choose to focus on. Production is exhausting, and neither of us have the time or energy anymore for making stuff we don’t believe in. We both gravitate towards the strange and offbeat, and love working within and playing with genres like horror and sci-fi. We’re both pretty equally enamored of art house and trash cinema, and especially when the two collide. We like to work with clients who are doing exciting and original work. In terms of the stuff we write and direct, it’s always about creating things we want to see on the screen, but don’t. We try to trust and lean into our unique voices and sensibility rather than trying to chase trends or guess what festival selection committees or potential investors are looking for. We just focus on what we want to do, and hope we can find people who want to take the ride.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I always want to uplift the voices and perspectives that are missing from the conversation, whether that’s coming from me or somebody else. Everything I write comes from something I went through, or am going through. There’s always a core idea I’m burning to address, because I haven’t seen someone else do it yet and I trust that if it resonates for me, it’ll probably resonate for someone else.

Small Talk, the first thing I ever made that screened at festivals, is a horror movie that grew out of me realizing I didn’t want to write autobiographically anymore, and would rather address some unsettling personal experiences through metaphor. One of the most gratify aspects of that experience was when people would tell me the film made them feel seen. It was my film school thesis, and a lot of people took issue with my desire to prioritize phone sex workers as my core audience, followed by sex workers in general, and then customer service workers in general — couldn’t I reach a larger audience if the film catered to those outside those industries looking for a peek into a world they don’t know? Maybe, but my goal isn’t to make things that will appeal to the largest possible audience. I’d rather make films for audiences that are underserved and interested in what’s off the beaten path.

I’m still trying to express my own truths and connect with audiences who can relate, or are at least curious about other perspectives and experiences. I have had long COVID for two years now, so I have a couple projects in the works that are related to living with chronic illness. That’s a big part of my life now, and I’m not seeing many stories from disabled/chronically ill perspectives, so that feels like a necessary point of focus. I’m always thinking about what I have to bring to the table that’s different, what I can contribute that I wish already existed but doesn’t. That’s usually what compels me to make it myself.

It’s the same thing if I’m editing or producing something I didn’t write or direct–I’m always looking to collaborate with other creators who have a compelling point of view and unique sensibility. For example, I loved working as a producer and editor on Bitten, A Tragedy written and directed by Monika Estrella Negra. We have complimentary political, artistic, and industry perspectives and I look forward to sharing more about future collaborations soon.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Reorganize so as to prioritize everyone getting their basic needs met — food, shelter, healthcare. Invest in community needs rather than war and death. Those are enormous goals requiring seizmic shifts, but that’s my honest answer. It is hard to keep making art while also keeping a roof over your head unless you are independently wealthy or born into an industry family or otherwise have access to resources the vast majority of us don’t. Profit and other financial motives result in risk aversion among gatekeepers and dwindling opportunities for original voices. How many brilliant works of art are we not getting because the artists inspired to make them have no time, energy, or resources after getting the rent paid and the kids fed, if they’re even able to do that? The best way to support the arts and emerging artists is to end poverty, full stop.

Contact Info:

• Website: 4milecircus.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/nicolewitte
• Twitter: twitter.com/nicolewsolomon
• Other: nicolewittesolomon.com patreon.com/4milecircus ko-fi.com/nicolewitte podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thecelluloidmirror

Image Credits
Emily Raw, Frank Huang, Jeanette Bears, Sean Mannion, Shawn Setaro