Meet Derek Mindler

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Sed ut perspiciatis unde.

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Derek Mindler. Derek was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Sasha Davydova.

Derek, can you walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, where my early childhood consisted of playing a lot of ice hockey. I was raised by a single mom, and she somehow managed to work, get up at the crack of dawn (or even before that) to drive me to the surrounding states for hockey games, and later on go back and finish her college degree, so she was definitely an inspiration and a big reason for my success.

I’d always liked movies, and in my young teens I started experimenting with a little digital photo camera we had which had a video mode, and started making videos with my younger brother, paying him in quarters. After some years of that and when it came time to look into colleges, we discovered the nearby Bucks County Community College had a film degree, and I received my Associates degree from there, then transferred to SJU in New York City, where I graduated from their film program in 2014.

I now live in New York, working as a freelance cinematographer on all kinds of things; feature films, documentaries, music videos, and promo content for the biggest shows and movies out there. And I still play adult league ice hockey!

Please talk to us about your creative work and career. What should we know?
Being a cinematographer is for me the perfect mix of being a technician and an artist. No project is ever the same, so it requires constant problem solving, creativity, collaboration, and being observant of the world around you, and the ability to throw the most well intentioned plans out the window on a moment’s notice if something better presents itself on set. Some of my most recently released projects are the Emmy Nominated “The One and Only Dick Gregory” on Showtime, the Oscar Shortlisted “Angola Do You Hear Us”, and The History Channel documentary “Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics” I have most of my work on my website, www.derekmindler.com, but I’m not always the best at keeping it up to date… So also check out my Instagram, @derekmindlercine!

Sasha Davydova has been a great friend to us and I know you’ve got a great relationship as well. Maybe you can tell our audience a bit about Sasha and your experience with them.
I’d been wanting a tattoo for most of my adult life, but I didn’t really know what I wanted, and thus was quite noncommittal about it. I knew the styles I really liked, which was fine line black ink work, and I had no intention of settling for something I didn’t absolutely love. I was browsing through tattoo artists who’s work I liked, but none seemed like the right fit and they were mostly on the other side of the country or overseas.

I found Sasha on Instagram, by searching for artists in NYC, and almost immediately had a feeling she was the right person. I think I remember seeing one of her posts of a tattoo she’d just done that was the exact style I was looking for, with amazing line work and attention to detail, and she had written something to the effect of “more of this please!”.
I know from my own work how amazing it can be to work with an artist when something fits seamlessly with their personal style, and that’s exactly what this process turned out to be.

We did a consultation, and I brought a bunch of visual references, as well as various geeky/technical filmmaking elements and graphics that I liked.
When I came in for my first session, Sasha had created a whole sleeve design and printed a ton of stencils of all the separate parts, and we had an absolute blast over the next 2-3 hours just laying them out on my arm and figuring out the best placements. In retrospect, I think I’d been thinking of it as “a” tattoo, which made it difficult to decide on something. But the way she started us off with a whole sleeve that flows together mostly took that difficult decision out of the conversation.

It took three long sessions to finish, but I loved every minute of the process. It’s been over a year now, and I consistently get compliments on it from new colleagues and even strangers, including celebrities who have seen me on set and gone out of their way to come ask about it.

I’m also really glad to be able to now consider Sasha a close friend.