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

Mikael, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Growing up in a Caribbean household the medical field was the only path in life that ever felt realistic to me. There’s obviously stability going into medicine, but there was also this unspoken added pressure as an only child and first-generation American in my family to make my parents sacrifices not go in vain. Despite having a lot of creative interest in both visuals and music throughout my life due to my background with both aspects in the church, it was always like “Yeah you can enjoy doing that kind of stuff, but keep it in the hobby category. There’s nothing substantial that YOU can actually make out of those career paths.” Growing up with that mindset was so influential in not really pursuing my actual interests even though I still always found some way to creatively express whether it was by making random art in photoshop or downloading a bunch of YouTube videos to turn around and edit my own music videos to songs of my choosing.

Heading into college I basically picked a medical career out of a hat and landed on pharmacy so decided that would be my future. I spoke with my freshman counselor during my first semester and he presented me with an opportunity to shadow a pharmacist. After my first day, I was quickly snapped out of this trance I had been stuck in and realized that I have no actual interest in any of these medical fields at all. What was I even doing? I had been metaphorically asleep floating down this lazy river lackadaisically cruising into my future, but at that moment I woke up and decided that I’m either going to swim the other way or drown because I don’t want to go in this one direction anymore. There was a lot that led up to the decision, but ultimately I switched my major from pre-pharmacy to film at the end of my freshman year. My parents threatened to disown me and kicked me out of their house in the heat of the moment of finding out, but it didn’t matter to me after so many long nights of debate, discussions with my friends, and prayer – this change in direction felt right in my soul.

It was 2011, I never really held a camera before and my only real experience with video was editing my own random things on windows movie maker. Realistically all of this video stuff was a foreign language to me and I jumped into film classes the most excited I had ever been about anything. Despite my excitement, my major was more focused on studying film theory rather than actually creating things with my own hands so I knew after a while that I needed to venture outside of the school environment and get more hands-on experience with a camera and develop my skill as a potential cinematographer. My thought process was that I wanted to understand how to instinctively capture an objectively good photograph and then elevate that with movement. I thought there was no one better at capturing in this way than a talented wedding photographer. They sometimes have one chance in a few rushed moments to document a couple’s big day and their work either comes out beautifully or they crumble into mediocrity. So I looked at a list of local photographers, focusing on their styles, and found Brian Adams Photo who took pictures in a candid natural way that also felt very commercial. I reached out asking if I could hold his SD cards on his wedding days just so I could learn more about his process, but he counter-offered me an internship where I was given the chance to both shoot and edit for him. What I didn’t know when reaching out was that he shared an office with a wedding videographer as well, Perfect Sky Wedding Films, so I ended up getting the best of both worlds learning a ton more about both photography and videography from these two talented guys while I finished up school.

I graduate having an intense love for three things – directing, cinematography and editing. My girlfriend and I moved to Atlanta hoping to land something in the various film productions happening. That proved to be really difficult since I had very little production experience and all that I was getting were unanswered emails and calls. My hands-on experience had mainly been with weddings and student short films so I quickly realized that I was ill-prepared and needed to find another way to continue developing my skills while making money. I now had camera skills and knew my way around editing programs at this point of deciding to be a full-time freelancer so these next six years from 2016 to 2022 became a journey of self-discovery, networking, creating opportunities, and honing in on my talent while investing in myself. In this video field, there are a ton of ways to create from filming weddings to capturing concerts to traveling around the world creating travel videos for hotels. Then by creating one thing, you can utilize that to open the door for another opportunity – that’s how I went from filming a behind-the-scenes video for Revlon to spinning that around to push my way through some doors and direct a commercial for Chick-Fil-A. This field is all about networking and using one job to work your way into another job. I don’t think anyone chooses a path in this creative field without knowing it’s all a risk. This desire to create and express myself fuels my daily life. I’m taking a shower, listening to a song and there’s imagery and movement that I can envision and want to turn into reality. I’m blessed to have the opportunity to create from my mind and I wouldn’t have gotten to this place in life where I’m happily able to do that without diving into the unknown.

Mikael, 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’m a visual creator. A filmmaker. A director. A cinematographer. An editor. A husband. A son of God. A goofball. A dreamer. I have multiple roles that I balance, but those titles cover the different facets of my life. I currently work in the commercial and fashion space with a side of music videos. Being an artist feeds both my soul and bills so I feel very blessed to have found something that I love to do that doubles as my job.

I’m Mikael Coleman. Pronounced Mik then Al. I usually say “It’s like Miguel but with a K” for the people who struggle with the concept that my name isn’t a unique way to spell Michael. I’m a first generation American born in Miami Dade, FL, and raised in a Jamaican Seventh Day Adventist household. My Jamaican roots are ingrained into my being and way of life. My people are expressive, fluid, chill, raw, and creative in so many ways that inspire me daily. The church is where I spent the majority of my childhood due to my mom working there. I was really active in creating and acting in plays, singing in the choir, playing drums, playing piano, and generally just found joy in creating there however I could. In high school, I taught myself how to edit videos on the home office computer that had windows movie maker installed. I would listen to a song, realize it didn’t have a music video, and then go download clips to make my own music videos for fun. This computer, unfortunately, SUCKED by having no graphics power and at a certain point it would stop showing me the preview of what I was editing so I’d have to export, see what things looked like, go back to fine-tune the cuts further, and repeat that process until I was finished. Looking back I have no idea how I was so patient and why I enjoyed that so much, but it was one of my favorite things to do. Transitioning into learning about cinematography through college was really eye-opening to me as its own beautiful method of storytelling through angles, framing, and color. I quickly became very inspired by the motivation of color and movement which I tend to explore in a lot of my videos.

I think of Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, Martin Scorsese, Barry Jenkins, Gina Prince-bythewood, and Hiro Murai as directors with notable styles that I admire, but I’m still on the journey of growing into whatever someone would call my overall style that makes my work feel like my work. I’m proud of my intentionality with color theory and the way I use movement through either my subject, the camera motion or the edit itself to motivate progression and rhythm. My bread and butter right now is in the short-form space creating 30-second spots for brands that are quick and sweet. I work with my beautiful and way more talented wife on dreaming up concepts and practical ways to execute what we envision for these edited visuals. As a director, I oversee most projects from concept to post-production and ensure my team is executing the vision that I sold to a client. And this isn’t like a sucky group project in high school type of crew who are going to slack off and one person is going to be stuck with all the work, the best part of creating these commercials and music videos is the beautiful teamwork that we all put in to create something we’ll be proud for the world to see. From my gaffer to my stylist, I have so much love for the people I get to work with on a consistent basis. They are amazing souls, great at what they do and they also understand that flexibility is key in this industry. We’ve learned how to bend without snapping. Whether it’s a crew of 3 people or a crew of 30 people, we get it done and we get it done well. Editing feels like my natural-born skill, cinematography feels like my voice in the world, and directing feels like a team leader position that I’ve had to work hard to mature into being right for. I’m proud that these are three facets of my work that I’ve been able to balance. I’ve always heard the “jack of all the trades, master of none” comments, but I find the balance between these roles necessary for my sanity because they all work my brain in completely different ways that have ultimately made me a stronger visionary.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The work that you post is your resume in this visual creative world. Whether it’s through Instagram, Tik Tok, or Youtube there are so many ways to get eyes on your work and turn that into an opportunity. By just posting on Instagram I would get a ton of DM’s from people who are looking for someone to do something video related. So for anyone starting out and reading this – if you’re really trying to grind that’s definitely not a bad way to get some income flowing and start building yourself up. I’ve found a lot of times where visibility both online and in person was the key to getting my next job. There have been gigs that I’ve honestly gotten just from being in the right room with someone at the right time and subtly pitching my services during our conversation. I quickly became known as a talented videographer who was able to produce a well-made video no matter the obstacles or tight deadlines. That put me on speed dial for a variety of clients but did keep me pretty stagnant with their smaller budgets and various constraints.

I think those were solid ways to build myself locally, but I found myself really leveling up when I transitioned out of that hustler mode and started connecting with production companies and agencies. Being able to pitch myself more professionally with the work that I was previously doing allowed me the opportunity to start getting bigger jobs with more concrete roles and larger budgets. The biggest advice I could give to anyone coming up right now is to never be afraid to reach out, post whatever work you’re proud of because you made that and that’s something worth sharing, and figure out where you want to go in this field so you can start tailoring your work in that direction. Complacency and meandering is the enemy.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Even though I wasn’t born in Jamaica, I thankfully go regularly and there’s always been something about being there where it feels like I’m able to reset and breathe again for my mental health. I’ve never felt out of place in Jamaica like I constantly have in America. Going to a private elementary school from Kindergarten to Third Grade where I was literally 1 of 2 black kids in the entire school made me both known by everyone and targeted by the bullies just because I had more melanin than everyone else. In one of my film classes in college, we would be tasked with creating fake casts for our screenplays and classmates would constantly try to whitewash my characters. Imagine telling a black person in 2022 that they should change their ideal casting choice of Michael B Jordan to Andrew Garfield or Regina King to Jennifer Anniston. This was my frustrating reality in 2012 with classmates who would constantly argue with me that white casts sell movie tickets and black led movies simply do not. Fast forward ten years and this has thankfully been disproven over and over, but as a bright-eyed new film student, I didn’t understand the prejudice that ran so deep with my seemingly open-minded college-aged peers. That the older generation that perpetuated systematic racism had children where their implicit bias continued to surround me on multiple occasions.

I hadn’t yet dived into the scientific tests done where white participants’ physiological arousal showed a complete lack of empathy and care for characters on screen that weren’t white as well. I hadn’t yet been on commercial sets as the only POC in a sea of white production crew members. I’ve straddled that line of privilege as a light skin African American who is accepted more readily in this space than some of my peers, but my ultimate goal is for all of us to eat and bring us up in this field because there’s no gatekeeping over here. There are so many limits that both my family and society have instilled in me that I’m still breaking free from, but creating how I want to create in this space has been healing.

I’ve teamed up with a group of friends as well as my wife to start Art Without Limits. It’ll be a small production company of like-minded individuals that can tackle projects where we can create, uplift, and tell stories that make a difference. I’m excited to devote more of my time to building this space for creatives and my personal end goal is to create films that can motivate others to break free from whatever limits them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mikaelcoleman.com
• Instagram: rawmixter
• Other: https://vimeo.com/mikaelcoleman