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

Hi Amy, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

By far the most meaningful project I have ever worked on is the feature-length documentary I just finished. It’s titled HAPPY CAMPERS and it chronicles the final season of a working-class summer colony on an island off the coast of Virginia. Documentaries typically take over your life for years on end, and this one was no different. But what made it special was what I got out of it on a personal level. Sure, I learned to shoot by myself – and I now reeeeaaaally appreciate every talented DP I’ve ever worked with. And I pushed to employ a very different and difficult editing style with its own unique structure, which was no picnic. This was also the first film I’ve ever hired a composer to score. However (pause), now that its finished and out into the world, what stays with me is what the stars of the film taught me. Our location was a family campground that didn’t look like much. And it was full of people I would have likely never crossed paths with if I hadn’t wandered in there. But after my husband and I moved into a 23-foot camper and spent a few summers there, I can honestly say it’s the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life. I’ll always be grateful to those beautiful people who taught me so much about how to make the best of things and how to be really grateful for what you have.

Amy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up in Baltimore, and took a lot of art classes in high school, so I thought I had some drawing talent. (I mean, it was high school after all.) When I went to college for illustration and realized that was NOT the case, I quickly switched to taking advertising classes. Advertising was the perfect career for me. I loved that horrid, sinking feeling that you’ll never come up with another good idea and this time, they are going to figure it out, and you’re getting fired for sure! That kind of challenge gives you ulcers, but it also keeps you sharp. I became an art director, so I got to learn the crafts of typography, photography, design and film. And a lot of the campaigns I’ve done involve comedy. I love sitting in a room trying to think up how to make people laugh all day. After doing that for a hundred years, I started directing commercials and making documentaries on the side. My first film was a portrait of a quirky school in Manhattan that taught dog grooming. It was the perfect opportunity to make something heartfelt and humorous at the same time, which by then, had become my voice. My first feature-length project was a documentary about a beauty pageant at a muskrat-skinning competition. I work really hard at finding the funny in life without making fun of anyone. I think you can sell a lot of products and entertain a lot of people that way.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

What drives me is a burning desire to find all the most interesting, hilarious, and worthwhile tidbits that the world has to offer and serve them up to my fellow humans. They can take the form of a place, a person, an event, or just the way something strikes me as funny. Sometimes I’ll just see a funny hairdo and squirrel it away in my brain for future use. The word “story” gets thrown around way too much these days, but I guess you could call them stories. I like baking those tidbits into commercials, short films, feature documentaries, and photographs. Finding and knowing about those things for myself makes my life so much more livable, and I love figuring out creative ways to work my experiences and my point of view into whatever I am making.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Making people laugh or cry. Or both.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://filmsbyamy.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happycampersdoc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happycampersdoc/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amybnicholson/
• Twitter: https://x.com/filmsbyAmy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@myrtleolivefilmsbyamynicho3790

Image Credits

All images courtesy of Amy Nicholson