We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carl Rosen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carl below.

Carl, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I didn’t go to film school or anything like that, and for the longest time I really saw myself as being a part of the literary world—I went to school for English and Literature, and right after college I freelanced for a few different writing jobs while also dipping a toe into photography. For some reason or other, I just wasn’t totally content with either writing or photography entirely, and film just really spoke to me as a medium that combined all of the elements I was interested in.

When I started messing around with filmmaking, I just did it so much—I didn’t come up for air at first. I assisted for a bunch of different people and projects while simultaneously working on my own passion projects, trying to both develop my own voice while also learning how to physically make something look how it did in my head—which is pretty much still the main obstacle.

Cinema is really weird because it’s super easy to get lost down the gear rabbit hole, especially when you’re first starting out. Everyday you’re thinking, “Oh, if I had that camera or that lens, I could make something so much better…” or something like that, when in reality that’s not the case at all. I think when I decided to focus on my filmmaking abilities especially with putting more effort into preproduction is when I really started seeing a difference in both my work and how a project felt during production. So now I’m like a preproduction crazy person—I’ll spend so much time doing visual research and creating treatments and whatnot.

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

I think my whole existence is tangled up between cinema and surfing. I’ve always been mildly obsessed with both. As a kid, I had really bad insomnia, and because I couldn’t sleep all of the time, I would either read or sneak R rated VHS’ into my room at night to watch on my TV VCR combo set. I watched a lot of good movies, and a lot of bad ones, but all of them ruled to 10 year old me. As an adult, I still watch a ton of movies and TV. And then surf-wise: it’s just one of the coolest things on the planet—surfing good waves with friends is just something in life I perpetually look forward to. From a young age, surfing has instilled two major ideas in me: how special the outdoors are, and how to be a good traveler. Those two ideas are paramount in what I do professionally in filmmaking.

As a Commercial Director/DP, I’m probably not the right fit, if the client is looking for a clean, sterile look. There are people that nail that look, but it’s not me nor do I want it to be me. I really just love creating emotional images that toe the line between dark and vibrant that can potentially suspend reality for brief seconds. I want the scripts for commercials to feel weird and ambiguous, but also smell like eggs and bacon with toast at the same time. I love when things feel raw and gritty, I love when things feel like home, but the home isn’t one you’ve been in before, I love when things don’t feel formulaic or pumped out of a machine. And I never want one project to feel like the last. I mostly work in the outdoor industry: fishing, surfing, outerwear, etc., but I also do a lot of work for tourism, food, and docu-style projects.

I do work both under my own name and also with a production company called Livitfilms, which is headed by my friend and insanely talented filmmaker, Patrick Rhea. Livitfilms really specializes in high-end, high-energy fishing and outdoor projects, and we get to go to some amazing places to create work in.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think just loving the job and evolution of the craft. I love watching commercials, movies, TV, all of it. It’s such a trip that I see my own work on broadcast or the internet sometimes. I think my love for filmmaking has just grown the deeper I go down the hole. I definitely have pinch myself moments and feel gratitude for where I’m at constantly.

I get really excited about pivoting within the industry as well—like as of now, I’m definitely focused on the commercial world, but in a few years, I might sink my teeth into making short films, and then maybe work on a feature, and then who knows, but I love all of that potential. It’s one of those “The world is your oyster,” feelings, and here’s a spoiler: I love oysters.

I also secretly find solace in the idea that I can’t imagine being retired, and that when I see myself in my late 60s or 70s, I’m making the best work I’ve ever made and hopefully being a force that inspires younger people and the industry itself—that feels lofty, but I think I actually believe it.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

In general, just being open to the different methods of filmmaking and editing is pretty important. I just recently made the full switch from Adobe Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve, and it opened up filmmaking again for me—not that it was stale or anything, but it allows me to execute ideas the way I see them in my head better. It’s honestly been a pain in the butt switching because I’ve been in Premier for roughly 10 years now, and at first I was fumbling around Davinci Resolve—but it’s also exciting and a confidence boost to know that I can learn something new pretty quickly, if I put my mind to it.

So outside of the specific idea that I love Davinci Resolve and it feels like a filmmaker’s playground and I definitely wish I found it earlier, I would say just in general that I wish I experimented more earlier in my career with methods, techniques, and gear that I didn’t know how to use as much as I do now, because really beautiful and meaningful moments come from being vulnerable in your craft I feel like.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vimeo.com/carlrosen
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carlitorosen/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/livit_film/ https://vimeo.com/livitfilms

Image Credits
profile photo: Photo by Jesse Brantman filming in water photo: Photo by Jesse Brantman black and white walking through tall grass: Photo by Jesse Brantman The rest are frame grabs from my films.