We were lucky to catch up with Nathan Walker recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nathan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

There have been many times throughout my creative journey that I wish I had started sooner. I grew up in a rather turbulent environment with a lot of uncertainty and as a result I was forced to take on more responsibility than was perhaps appropriate at the time.

While my peers were going off to college or the military or to intern at their parent’s company I had to put any idea of higher education on hold indefinitely. For a while I think I had a chip on my shoulder about this fact. I felt I was stunted professionally, financially and also from a standpoint of social mobility.

However, while I was working odd jobs and struggling to pay rent with my now wife I had the opportunity to meet an extraordinary cast of characters from all walks of life. I also built a further sense of resilience and independence which many of my peers perhaps did not have.

There were many things that I needed to work out personally so that I could have the capacity to thrive in a creative space without losing my sense of self. I’m happy to say I was able to do that.

At the end of the day while I ascribe to the old saying “youth is wasted on the young.” I also think that experience and emotional maturity can make all the difference in producing compelling art.

Nathan, 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 have had an intense imagination and overwhelming appreciation for storytelling for as long as I can remember. As I have alluded to, my environment as a child, could be quite challenging at times so I think I often found solace in a captivating film or TV show. My mom worked a lot so it was easy to pop in a VHS and be swept away from reality for countless hours without worrying about the structure of my day.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age and required to take various tests conducted by a child psychologist. My sheer energy and force of will made me a hellion in school which I’m sure made my mother’s life difficult at times. In a concerted effort to rein me in, I was encouraged to apply my energy towards creative pursuits.

This methodology seemed to work just fine since I quickly became engrossed in activities that I found highly stimulating. I would play video games, write, draw, sing, and come up with cool stories.

In high school I assisted in the creation of segments for the school news spot which aired every Friday morning during homeroom. This meant coming up with a topic and sometimes interviewing teachers and/or students as well as editing the footage on Avid NLE systems. The edit would then be exported to a VHS tape, which was kind of retro in hindsight given it was the early 2000’s, but loved it.

It was during this time that I became aware of filmmaking as a career but having grown up in Bristol County, Massachusetts; the idea of working in “Hollywood” seemed so illusory and strange. After high school I went right to work and moved in with my wife. I floundered for a while until one day when I was twenty two or so, I remember asking my wife, “what the hell am I doing?” I found an accelerated online degree program with Full Sail University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Digital Cinematography in 2018.

I worked full-time while navigating immense personal turmoil with a full course load to boot. Neither one of my parents attended college, so looking back I am very proud and incredibly grateful to my wonderful wife who kept me from drowning in every possible figurative and metaphorical sense. During my junior year of college I began writing a strange and angsty feature length screenplay which would come to be known as “Leo and The Shark.”

Seeing as I was young dumb and full of…gumption, I decided I would just make the movie by recruiting a small local crew of college kids and funding it with credit cards. Not the best idea I now realize but I felt I needed to do something because Hollywood would not just come a-knocking. We managed to shoot 75% of the movie before I ran out of money and credit. I put the project on hold for almost a year then launched a Kickstarter campaign with the footage we already shot. A producer, who I met through a mutual friend, saw the footage and asked to see the full script. A week later we were sitting down and discussing a budget.

“Leo and The Shark” premiered on Amazon Prime back in 2020. Admittedly it was a rough product made by a bunch of inexperienced college kids but we made a movie. A feature length film, and managed to get it on a legitimate streaming platform! What happened next was pure luck.

The sound recordist on “Leo and The Shark” (Jesse Hernandez) went on to work as a background extra for a couple of days on “Little Women,” the Greta Gerwig film, which was filming at the time in Boston. He asked the Key Production Assistant if the guy needed an extra hand on set. Apparently he did in fact need help and asked if Jesse had any other friends interested in working on set. Jesse and I had become pretty close by this point so my name came up. Next thing I know I’m getting a text at 11PM about coming to work on a new film shooting in Boston. “Can I be at basecamp at 4:30AM tomorrow? Sure!”

That film ended up being “Knives Out.” I worked on that for a couple weeks before going on to various other films and television shows being shot in New England. I did that on and off for 5 years working as a production assistant and assistant cameraman up until the recent strikes. I am very fortunate to have worked with incredibly talented people on some really rad projects.

All that time I have been writing, reading, learning, and consuming tons of art in order to remerge with a meaningful message to convey. Currently I’m working on a project called “Til I Rot,” which I wrote and directed. We just finished the first round of principal photography and are looking for additional funding to finish it off. It has been very creatively fulfilling thus far.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Yes, there is not a linear path to having a successful and financially lucrative career in the film industry. I think it’s like that for a lot of artists, regardless of the medium. There is of course more ways now than ever to monetize your work but there has also never been so much competition and oversaturation in every market.

I grew up envisioning a trajectory similar to directors such as Tarantino, Nolan, Kevin Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson, etc. Where you would write something really cool and scrape together just enough capital to make a phenomenal low budget indie that would premiere at Sundance and totally level the industry. Then all of the studio heads would have bidding wars for your next script which could then be made with seemingly endless resources. Each time the budgets and influence grow. Rinse and repeat.

Well it’s not really like that any more. I won’t go into all the reasons as to why that is. It’s been discussed
exhaustively but essentially film has become about convenience rather than experience. Streaming is cool but it also fucked everything up. Kids idolize YouTubers now instead of movie stars and theaters seem to be going the way of the Dodo.

Is it depressing? Yes. Does it show any signs of changing? No. Will I stop making things I think are cool? No.

The financial dynamic has shifted greatly as the various disparate groups within the industry vie for power and money. That’s a component the average person outside of the industry wasn’t really considering until union struggles were brought to light in the media during the recent strikes.

I’ve never really had someone to fall back on financially. I can’t go without work for months or years at a time while I’m waiting for a project to come around. As a result I’ve taken long stretches of time away from working on set throughout my career during periods of industry contraction. Periods such as now where we are seeing a terrible slump in production which is directly effecting a large percentage of filmworkers. Its tough right now and you don’t have to dig too deep to find people who are seriously struggling.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think there is a lot that can be done to support artists and creatives in this country. For one, let’s stop defunding arts education in schools. There is a large subset of the population, including myself, that can’t solve a math equation or scientific formula to save their lives! Put that same group in front of a canvas or behind the lens of a camera and they can make magic. It is a widely recognized fact nowadays that there are different types of intelligence. Let’s not hamper entire generations by castrating their means of expression and feeding the remnants to an AI algorithm.

Also why is it that many developed countries such as New Zealand and Canada seem to have comprehensive government film grants whereas options within the US are relatively lame in comparison?

We NEED more funding for individuals who NEED film. People who may not have anything else to keep them going other than the kernel of an idea. Great works of art come from struggle but we could also stand to lessen that struggle just a little.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8749293/
• Instagram: @nathandavidwalker
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-david-walker-885b26107/

Image Credits

Nathan David Walker
William Greenberg