We were lucky to catch up with David Navarro recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, David thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
While doing my thing as a D.J., I purchased a lot of lights that were used primarily for parties. I always felt that lights and smoke are what enliven the event because, without them, one is just a very loud glorified radio.
Along with the lights I owned I had also gotten some lighting units given to me by my brother, who at that time worked for a major film lighting company doing repairs for them but now and for quite some time is the owner of a very successful film lighting repair business called, “Galaxy Lighting & Repair.”
So being thirty, with an incredibly loving wife, two wonderful young kids, unemployed, between jobs, finishing up a degree, and DJing at parties, I wasn’t in a “what now,” but a “what’s next” mentality. This is where all these happy accidents of owning lights, being available, and seeking out my next opportunity culminated toward my next career move.
A childhood friend, Michael Lopez, asked me if I would light his short film. Mike knew I was unemployed, had plenty of lights, and had lit a project or two for some others in our friend circle, so he knew that I somewhat knew what I was doing. Now here comes the kicker… he was going to pay me, and once I heard that, I said sure since I was not doing anything anyway and we all got together and shot the project over a few weekends.
I was the Gaffer on Mike’s film and even though I was the only guy on the lighting team I still had a great time. At the end of our long days, we would all hang out and drink beers, laugh and joke with each other and when it was over I thought to myself, damn that was a lot of fun, we were making movies, having a good time and truly enjoying ourselves.
I took in that moment and decided that this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life… make movies with my friends, old and new. To this day, I try to keep that moment close to my heart. I continue to make films with friends, more great memories, more laughter, and more friendships. For anyone wondering, yes, Mike and I are still friends to this day and we have shot many projects together over past twenty five years.
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?
I am a working professional filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. I started my film career as a gaffer, working on many low to no-budget short films, features, and music videos for several years early on. Eventually, I graduated to the role of Lighting Director, which led to work on shows such as ESPN: Sports Science (my team and I built the stage, and I worked for ten seasons), Lucha Underground (vignettes all four seasons), The Director’s Chair with Robert Rodriguez, Man at Arms: Art of War (2 seasons), and Car Warriors (two seasons), where I was allowed the freedom to create the lighting look of those programs. Over time, I naturally transitioned to the role of Cinematographer, where I have shot many award-winning short and feature films.
Lately, I have been having a great time writing, producing, and directing projects in the comedy, drama, and horror genres, having shot and/or directed many festival award-winning films in short, web, and commercial formats.
These projects have led me to work with great filmmaking collaborators such as Eric Lee Huffman, Tracee Meltzer and Clare Berhinger .
Eric and I have been working on and filming many different projects over the past seven years to build brand awareness to several of our IP’s and currently have several feature films we hope to shoot. Our current project getting close to shooting is “UFO Phil-The Movie.” To build brand awareness to UFO Phil prior to the shoot, we are in the trenches creating a web series titled “UFO Phil – Space Invader.” In the series UFO Phil zaps into places unexpectedly and drug into the comedic chaos. The show is a fish out of water about a fish out of water but with aliens. We already have two episodes up for viewing on YouTube and are in pre-production on the 3rd.
Tracee Meltzer, aka Roxy Astor from the Original Glow Series and I have developed several shows in the wrestling genre which consists of competition, feature, and documentary programs. Together, we have been pitching and shooting sizzles for presentations to hopefully take them to the next level. Some examples are “Life After Glow” a reality show about former Glow Girls, “Dan-The Bionic Man Magnus” an inspirational documentary about a kick boxer who won two championship world titles both only months after emergency open heart surgery, and “HUN ” a film about Queen Kong/Matilda The Hun and her incredible life as a female wrestler.
Clare Behringer and I for the past year have been working meticulously developing shows and pitching programming that fill the reality, game, and docu-series space as well as the feature films mentioned above, to various houses across the country. Clare is a powerhouse and an incredible creative partner.
Now, as we are nearing some successes, we are in the process of merging our companies, DLG Productions (Los Angeles, CA) and Unflappable Studios (Charleston, SC), to create a company that provides production services as well as develop and produce shows we on both coast.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
The best way society can help artists is to support them, period end of story. This subject is a trigger for me as it gets my heart and blood racing.
Certain people or segments of society will not always like what an artist has to say, but isn’t that the point of art, to challenge us, to make us think, realize, evaluate, and grow as a people? If art was the same across the board then it’s not art but rather corporate slop that the conglomerates shill out to the wasteland of the consumer landfill.
There needs to be artist funds available where one doesn’t have to do somersaults all over the internet writing dissertations as to why their art needs to be funded. All art and I mean all of it; writing, film, television, photography, music, painting, sculpting, et al, should be supported by tax dollars and those successful in the business regardless of whether a minority of the population doesn’t like it. Artists shouldn’t have to rely on the wealthy or corporate benefactors to do their actual art.
I would add the caveat that when an artist does become successful through government funding and/or grants and becomes self-sustaining, they should give back what was provided to them so that other artists can eventually do the same as they did, hopefully creating an artistic, self-sustaining, creative ecosystem. Unfortunately, this is most likely Utopian thinking on my part.
Back to rant: If people say, “I don’t think my tax dollars should be going to wasteful artists,” well, I don’t like my tax dollars going to corporate welfare/bailouts or war, but yet here we are. What needs and should happen is to expand arts and culture funding across the board. The government needs to fully fund the National Endowment for the Arts (like it was before a “certain” group clutched their pearls,) bring back arts programs to all public schools from pre-K to high school, and while I am on my soapbox, education SHOULD be free for everyone, all the way through college, because an educated society is a better one. We have already seen the alternative. Lastly, people should support their local artists, go to an art gallery, see a local band, and watch a movie by an unknown filmmaker.
As a society, we have the choice of providing funding to artists who challenge our current way of thinking, who inspire us, who make us think and grow as a human beings, or we continue to give money to corporations who oppress and obfuscate the masses. My answer will always be to support artists.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
The mission that drives my creative journey is the constant and incessant need to create. I can’t resist it because my mind is in a continual state of forward creative motion. When not working on paid projects, I am up early regardless, going into my office to either write, edit, or develop whatever projects need my attention at the given moment. I thrive on the more challenging projects because those are the ones that help me grow as an artist and filmmaker. Those challenges help me utilize old skills and expand on them in new ways that keep my skills sharp during work downtime, and boy has their been some downtime. Pre-strike, post strike, pending strike, pandemic, lockdown… its been really rough for us in the filmaking community. Shoutout to my comrades on survining the last extremely tough few years. Cheers to coming back stronger than we ever were!
What was painstakingly hard to learn during my process was to not get on myself for mistakes I made. I only had myself to blame and needed to take those moments as a learning opportunity, use my time to learn and understand what I did wrong and re-calibrate my approach, technique, or style. That is why I do a lot of personal projects because they serve as my education and learning process. It doesn’t cost anyone money or time other than my own, and it saves me professional embarrassment, so it’s a win-win.
With that said, the goal would be to put quality projects out into the world so that people can watch or read and enjoy my work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0622858
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreamlighting
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-navarro-bab3354
- Other: https://vimeo.com/dreamlighting
Image Credits
Ian Lancaster
Kat Marcinowski
Colin Costello
Caroline Herrington