We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Patrick Hogue. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Patrick below.
Patrick, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Reflecting on the journey that lead me to where I am, it’s only with hindsight that I’m able to recognize the decisions in my life that so many others would classify as “risks”.
The first risk that set the precedent for where my career would lead me was in between my junior and senior year of film school, having just accepted an unpaid summer internship at a production company (Echo Lake) in Los Angeles. As I sat on the plane, flying from Rochester, NY to Los Angeles, CA, I felt a familiar nervousness in my stomach, personified by these uncontrollable butterflies that always warned me when I was about to do something that was “too much” or “too scary” to handle.
Trapped on that flight I thought, “I don’t do things like this. I don’t fly across the country to a city I’ve never been in, meeting people I’ve never met, just “trusting” that it’ll all work out.” My whole life was defined by my anxiety protecting me from the unknowable and sticking to what has been and will always be.
However, what followed was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my lifetime.
I fell in love with Los Angeles, with the people I met that summer and ultimately I saw the first glimpse of what my life could become if I were able to break through the anxiety those butterflies so often were instilling in me.
Cut to a year later, moving to Los Angeles with four friends after graduating film school, with no job lined up and not single idea of how to practically pursue my dream of filmmaking and those butterflies were at it again.
The following years were filled with numerous moments that I would feel their wings flutter in my stomach.
– When I started my first job as a runner at a visual effects company.
– When I quit that job to work as a Swing Grip on an independent feature film.
– When I made my first short film outside of school with,.
– When I ultimately moved from Los Angeles to NYC in 2021.
Each of these moments presented me with another hurdle of anxiety that seemed insurmountable at first. However, because of that first flight to Los Angeles, I not only knew I could overcome these hurdles, but that they would become easier and easier to overcome. Over the years those butterflies would become less powerful, to the point where I would actually get excited when they would arrive once more.
Because I knew It was an opportunity to make me stronger.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I started my career from a very passionate place, having been obsessed with films from a young age, it was not obvious to me that there was a legitimate career path available in that field.
It was only through the trial and error of my own experimentation; I.e. YouTube videos, recording school events, practicing editing and writing, that I began to discover the craft behind my passion. It wasn’t until I was accepted into the film program at the Rochester Institute of Technology that I was truly surrounded by others who not only shared that same passion, but had already began refining their craft in ways that pushed me to do the same.
I wrote and directed six short films in my time at school, culminating in my thesis film SHERMAN, along with collaborating with my classmates on dozens upon dozens of other films, truly embodying the ideology that there is no substitute for experience. Weekends were not “free days” to relax, they were precious pockets of time to get back on set and finish our films.
This affirmation of filmmaking as not only my passion but also as my craft served me exceedingly well once I moved to Los Angeles after graduating with a BFA in 2017. Relocating with a number of the friends I graduated school with, we soon learned the realities of balancing our pursuit towards this passion of ours, and paying rent.
In the four years I spent in Los Angeles, I fundraised and produced another short film entitled SEW, where I further brought together the collaborators I had been assembling along the way. All the while gaining practical experience in a vast number of roles from freelancing on projects that range from independent YouTube shorts, to multiple seasons on multimillion dollar television shows and films.
With this further experience following me to NYC, which I moved to in 2021 in order to be closer to my family, I have continued to build my collaborative community as it all leads me to 2025 in which I’ve formed my production company CRIMSON HORIZON LLC, and am currently developing my first feature film entitled THE DREAD.
Combining my love of existential horror with 90’s Spielberg wholesomeness, I’m looking to create worlds that express the range of emotions from the darkest depths to warmest heights, all with a rollercoaster of an adventure to bring the audience through.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
My ultimate goal of being a storyteller has never changed in the years after it first took hold. However, if there is a greater mission statement that I would like my career to embody, it’s that dreams are achievable with practicality and empathy.
I have met so many people on my journey that believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that in order to succeed, you need to suffer and sacrifice. There’s a quantified value added to the pain that leads artists to develop their instincts as well as their craft, with that pain becoming a “mandatory” quality for some others to truly succeed.
I had plenty of moments of heartbreak and failure that I believed would tip the cosmic scales of success towards my direction. However, when those moments of success came and went, I was still left with that pain, and its justification feeling hollow. I do believe that there is no replacement for experience, both positive and negative, but the mantra of others that you need to suffer and risk to succeed I completely disregard.
As I approach my first feature film and ultimately the first “product” I would like to introduce to the greater film market, I want to embody the example of someone who leads with practicality and empathy, rather than risk and unnecessary stress.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Films, and art as a whole, embody the truth that none of us are truly alone.
Films especially give storytellers the rare opportunity to literately depict their point of view for others to see. At different moments in my life, a film has come around that shares my point of view, whether it be aesthetically, thematically or on a deeper empathetic level.
Films like Back to the Future, Cabin in the Woods, Her, Whiplash, among others showed someone who felt isolated and misunderstood through a passion that he so deeply loved, that he wasn’t alone.
All I want is to have that same effect on someone else.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hogue_filmmaker/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/18uBVrVSgN/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-hogue-bb750b9b?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@patrickhogue493?si=4QiN8aMiUfekv-iI
Image Credits
Noah Saucerman Pitts
Lauren Jeanine Mays
Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr.
Ashton Herrild