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

Alright, Davis thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?

Of all the challenges I have faced throughout my career, mischaracterization continues to be the most dominant. For years, I struggled with the prevailing notion that the artistic and engineering worlds were mutually exclusive. As a result, I was left to wander between the two, never feeling truly at home in either. Again and again, the question always became — how do you build a career, if people don’t understand what you do?

What I learned is that, at my core, I am a creative engineer. Someone who solves creative-based problems with engineering-based solutions, and vice versa. The more the lines between the two blurred, the more I found myself drawn to a project. It was, for this reason, I eventually found myself in the film and TV industry. A place where I was surrounded by others who saw the value in melding various disciplines together to create something new.

Finally, I had found the answer to my question. A fulfilling career for me did not need to be universally understood, it just needed to be built.

Davis, 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?

The path to my current career has been a long and winding one, littered with careers in computer engineering, photojournalism, theater, heavy machinery, and about a dozen others. Unknowingly, each one was providing a small piece to the larger puzzle that I’d only recently begun to finally put together.

The catalyst was my time on Motor Mythbusters, where I finally realized that I didn’t need to keep searching through careers, I needed to combine them. On that show, we never had any idea what problem would come through the workshop, and being able to pull from such a varied background was the only thing that allowed me to succeed in that environment. It was also there that I learned to fall back in love with the making of a tangible thing. For so many years prior, I had worked in mediums that did not yield anything physical, and that had begun to take its toll. Instead, I found so much satisfaction in both the process and end result of becoming a maker; to be able to hold something you made in your hand.

Once the show wrapped, I immediately set out to create a workshop of my own. With my talents proven, I could finally carve out my own niche within the world of special/practical effects. In the years since, I’ve continued to grow my workshop, all while advocating for the craft and creativity of practical effects over CGI. With projects spanning everything from experimental prototypes to robots, movie props and more, I never grow tired of solving new problems and inventing new ways to tell visual stories. Because, for me at least, engineering is at its best when used to create art.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

By far the most rewarding part of being a creative is the collaboration and teamwork that comes with producing any project. Art is impossible within a vacuum, and the insights and inspiration I get from working alongside others has always been its own reward for me. I consider myself very fortunate to live somewhere that encourages artistic expression, and the growth I have experienced from being constantly immersed in other’s projects is immeasurable.

It’s incredibly heartwarming to know that I’m surrounded by others who have pursued their craft with the same unyielding passion that I have, all the while lifting up those around them. Because in a world that so often encourages competition between peers, finding a community that actively supports one another is worth so much more than any salary can ever offer.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Something that has always stuck with me is the French expression, “l’art pour l’art” or “art for the sake of art”. It’s this idea that true art is not created by any one specific group, it’s done simply for the sake of creating art. In a culture dramatically impacted by an ever-increasing gap in wealth, art has become something that only the affluent can afford to pursue. The results of which have created this false impression that art created by the wealthy is somehow more valuable, when in reality, they have only been allowed more opportunity to fail. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the film industry, where the “pay to play” model continues to prioritize the stories of those who can afford to have them told.

Coming from a world outside of the creative industry, I naively thought merit would dictate what media would be granted a platform. That all art would be judged not by where it came from, but the degree to which it stirred something within. Instead, I have had to come to terms with a very different system. One where most people’s connection to art is through a handful of social media platforms and streaming services, instead of the artists themselves. It’s why I encourage everyone to form their own relationship with art, and to create some of their own.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://backhaul.us
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdavisdewitt/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@backhaul-studios

Image Credits
Davis DeWitt