We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kai Patterson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kai below.
Kai, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Everyone has crazy stuff happen to them, but often small business owners and creatives, artists and others who are doing something off the beaten path are often hit with things (positive or negative) that are so out there, so unpredictable and unexpected. Can you share a crazy story from your journey?
July 7th, 2022, I wake up to a slew of texts and notifications from friends and social media. “Kai, have you seen this? Variety wrote an article about you!” I read in one of my texts. I did a double take, rubbing my eyes hard since I’d just woken up. Was I still asleep? I checked my other notifications, people were tagging me in posts about my video that had just gone viral the day before. Variety, IGN, Entertainment Weekly, ScreenRant, Yahoo News, Inside the Magic—they’d all written articles about me. I was truly baffled, especially since I was finding this out online like everyone else. This day changed the rest of my life. But what happened the day before to cause all of this?
On July 6th, 2022, I decided to post a TikTok about a fan edit I had done for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney Plus. In my video I explained that the 6-episode series should’ve been a movie, and that I had taken it upon myself to re-edit it into a 2.5 hour feature film. I’ve been a filmmaker since I was 5 years old and I’m currently a professional editor, VFX artist, director and writer, so I wanted to show people what I could do with a story and tell it in a new way. So I posted on TikTok and asked if anyone cared to see it and the video blew up. Almost 2 million views in one day and I was getting thousands of messages from Star Wars fans that wanted to see it. So I made it available to those who had a Disney Plus subscription and encouraged people to watch the show first, to really appreciate the work I did. I seriously expected the video to flop and for no one to care. There have been many fan edits done over the years and I never expected to get so much attention for it. So it was an insane surprise to see major media outlets reporting on what I had done. That day changed my life and I couldn’t be more grateful for it. I’ve now been on countless podcasts, shown my work with millions and met some pretty incredible people through this crazy situation and I wouldn’t change a thing about how it all went down.
Kai, 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 Kai Patterson, a filmmaker born and raised in Hawaii on the island of Oahu. From a young age, I developed a deep passion for filmmaking. Watching Jurassic Park at just 5 years old sparked my love for storytelling through film. Initially, I thought I wanted to be a paleontologist, but I soon realized that it was the art of filmmaking that truly fascinated me.
At 12 years old, I entered a local video contest in Hawaii meant for high school students and won first place, despite being in 7th grade. This accomplishment led to hosting my own segment on the local TV show, Brown Bags To Stardom, which earned me an award in 2007. I had also spent a lot of time one film, TV, and photo sets as a child actor and model. As much as I loved performing, I was also taking the time to see how everything worked behind the scenes. I wanted to know how to make my own movies, and being on the sets of Baywatch Hawaii, Blue Crush, Lost, etc, really opened my eyes to what could be done with storytelling.
In 2008, I moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where I dedicated years to creating short sketch videos for my YouTube Channel. I attended Principia College starting in 2013 and became part of the college’s Media Services Video Crew. During my time there, I produced several short films, including Red Mission, The Caulfield Killer, Moments, Ready Or Not, and more. There wasn’t a film school so I made films on my own time and majored in Philosophy as I figured it would help me create films with a deeper connection to the human experience.
Following my graduation, I relocated to Los Angeles, California, with the goal of pursuing a career in the film industry. Over the years, I have worked on commercials, features, shorts, podcasts, and various artistic mediums. I spent almost two years as an Associate Producer and Editor for Lewis Howes’ School of Greatness Podcast before transitioning to freelance filmmaking and VFX work.
Some of the services I provide is video editing (shorts, features, podcasts), VFX work (2D & 3D animation, modeling, compositing), graphic design (logo creation, motion graphics), writing (short stories, screenplays, novels), and 3D Cinematic Logos for independent film companies.
I’m extremely passionate about telling stories visually and I’m sure one day you’ll be on your way to a theater to see one of my films.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
There are two really big parts of being a storyteller that always warms my heart. The first is getting feedback from people that engage in my work, whether that’s watching something I’ve worked on or reading something I’ve written, it doesn’t matter. When people share feedback with you it means they’re fully partaking in the creative process with you. You’ve reeled them in and now you’ve got them thinking. Whether it’s positive or negative also doesn’t really matter, you can always learn from someone who is taking the time to give you feedback. I also just really enjoy talking to people about the creative process, so it’s always a treat for me when I get to talk about doing what I love.
The second most rewarding aspect of being a storyteller is bringing people together. When I share my art and someone tells me they go their whole family together to view it and talk about it, or they got to share a day with their kid bonding over something I worked on, or a group of best friends had a movie night, or everyone I know comes out to a screening of a film I made, it just delights more than I can express. I think of my childhood and the countless movie nights I had with my family and how that brought us together to laugh, cry, or quote all our favorite lines. I think about my mom reading bedtime stories to me and how that filled my imagination to the brim, spilling into my dreams, and then into my reality. Stories are so powerful and I love that sometimes I get to bring people together to experience something new and exciting with the people they love.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I’m currently in post production for my Twilight Zone inspired short film called “The Caligo Cuckoo” which is about a man who stumbles into an empty bar in the middle of stormy night trying to ignore his life’s problems. A mysterious man appears from the shadows to offer him a better life, but only if he can win a game of pool. The man has no idea what’s at stake if he wins… or loses.
The journey of bringing my short film to life has been riddled with challenges, starting with its initial slated filming in 2020, being postponed due to the sweeping global pandemic. As the United States continued to grapple with the relentless COVID-19 crisis, we even pondered the possibility of transforming this project into a 3D animated short, utilizing cutting-edge virtual production technology. However, after careful consideration, we opted against this path.
Eventually, we decided to forge ahead with a live-action shoot in a bar in Los Angeles, but first we needed funding. I’d never done a crowd fund before but I had heard from many other filmmakers that it can really be a toss up. Riding on the wave of my success from re-editing the Obi-Wan Kenobi series into a movie I thought this would be an easy task, but boy was I wrong. We were asking for $12,000 and we barely got $3,000. This meant more money coming out of my pocket and I’d have to ask for more favors. I had my Director of Photography flying out from Boston just to shoot it and my mother was flying out from St. Louis to be the onset acting coach. Filming was happening whether we had the money or not. This story is something I’ve been passionate about since high school when I first started toying with the concept, so I was eager to finally get it brought to life.
My introduction to ‘The Twilight Zone’ series occurred during my formative years, courtesy of my mother. I would eagerly tune in to reruns on television, captivated by each episode’s ability to whisk viewers away to alternate dimensions teeming with limitless possibilities, often culminating in a spine-tingling twist. These narratives felt akin to the age-old ghost stories one might share with friends around a campfire – cautionary tales, mysterious and haunting. The impact of the show on my young mind was profound, and I yearned to create a film that could rekindle those same feelings of intrigue and unease in me today. ‘The Caligo Cuckoo’ is a tale of losing sight of one’s priorities. It delves into the notion of glimpsing oneself through the lens of another, not with empathy but with envy.
Our endeavor to bring ‘The Caligo Cuckoo’ to life unfolded over two intense days in mid-June. It was a race against the clock, requiring us to cram an immense amount of work into a brief timeframe. Yet, I am brimming with pride at what we were able to achieve under such pressure.
Currently, we find ourselves in the middle of the post-production phase. Editing, color and most of the visual effects shots were finished at the beginning of September, and next we fully immerse ourselves in sound design and mixing while we start to submit to film festivals. It’s been a struggle to get this story finished but I’m so proud of it!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kaipattersonfilms.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/kaipattersonfilms
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/kaipattersonfilms
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/kaipattersonfilms
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/kaipattersoncut
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/kaipattersonfilms
- Other: www.tiktok.com/@kaipattersonfilms