We were lucky to catch up with Shawn Salomon recently and have shared our conversation below.

Shawn , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Film School is a very interesting place to be. On the outside looking in it seems like a waste of time and that everything that can be learned in film school can be learned by just doing. Whether that’s going online and signing up to be a PA on whatever set or just producing sets of your own, why would I go into monumental amounts of debt to learn a trade that I might never see returns in? Some might say film school offers discipline, some might say it offers connections but the thing that I value the most about my time in film school is that it offers perspective.

While in film school I had an opportunity to place myself in almost every role that would regularly be available on a film set and I fucked up on some (sorry y’all) of those roles. It wasn’t the end of the world, everyone fucks up on sets whether it’s forgetting to charge a battery or forgetting to call for a tail slate but those fuck ups teach us things. When I would make life harder for the people designing lighting I’d take note of that for next time, when the costuming made things hard for me to place a wireless mic pack on someone I made note of that for next time. Working all of these different roles not only made me a better member of the team, it helped me suggest solutions for those times when things went awry on a set and ultimately it makes me a better director and a producer. When I’m in a leadership role, I have the perspective of most everyone else on set and can adjust the way that things are structured to accommodate and make it so that everyone’s at their best.

If I went back in time I wouldn’t change much about my filmmaking journey. I met lifelong friends in the right place, at the right time and I wouldn’t change that for the world. What I would change is that I would advocate for myself more. My experience as a Haitian American artist thus far has been the path of most resistance, from family to institutions but that’s never stopped me. Ancestors at my back, I’ve always known when it’s time to go into business for myself and that’s the most important thing I’ll leave you all with. After a certain point and after a certain understanding you need to reach out and discover your own knowledge, find your own people and forge your own path. Some people have it harder than others, some people have it easier but it is a lot sweeter when you split your knuckles fighting for it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Shawn Salomon and I’m a 25 year old Haitian American Filmmaker.

I’m a Writer/Director/Creative Director that loves to tell stories about the human condition and the most uncomfortable parts of life and conversations. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been enamored with stories that make me feel a pit in my stomach after reading and make me think about them for a long long time.

I went to film school where I learned most everything that I know and the gaps were filled by the people who I met, worked with and firewatched lights with. At the moment I’m an independent filmmaker but lately I’ve taken an interest in creating short film fashion media with a film collective I created called SypionStory.

SypionStory, named after my late grandmother Marguerite Sypion, encompasses all of the post graduate works that I make along with my team that I met in film school. Our first collaboration was a fashion film with backing music by a friend of ours as a proof of concept but we aim to create all different types of advertisements that range from clothing to music videos to food.

SypionStory is something that we’re building from the ground up and I’m excited to see where it takes us.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The mission driving my creative journey is to appreciate life as cruel and ugly as it gets. Everyone experiences the loss of life at some point and I was both fortunate and unfortunate enough to have it happen as a teenager. The namesake of my film collective, SypionStory, is named after my late grandmother. Ever since I began the filmmaking side of my creative journey all of my films have been about the uncomfortable conversations that happen in life.

My first student assignment was a reinterpretation of Andre 3000’s verse on Life of the Party but instead of it being Three Stacks speaking to his mother through Kanye’s mother this time it was the namesake of my grandmother talking to a friend I lost. The next short film, two friends talking about the meaning of life and how crushing it feels to have existed so long and potentially end up a failure. The film after that was a family documentary about meeting my little sisters on my dad’s side and how I was afraid to meet them because I thought they’d hate me like they might hate him. My most recent short film was about a teacher who goes above and beyond to help a student and the system fires her because she didn’t conform to how the school viewed teaching students.

Not exactly the safest lineup in terms of messaging and I intend to keep it that way and keep things divisive. Not for the sake of being edgy either but for the sake of being real to my own self, my own experiences and my own world.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most reward aspect of being an artist in my experience is getting to see the completed product. Sleepless nights, countless Google searches and YouTube tutorials, broken pencils, crashing applications, crumpled up paper, writer’s block, you name it, all contribute to the feeling of euphoria when you surpass these things and finish something. The second best thing is getting to show someone the product but number 1 for me is easily finishing something that you worked hard on. One of my most memorable experiences on a film set is working on a friend’s junior thesis. There was this elaborate one take that we had to do in such a small space and we were running out of time that when we did pull it off you would’ve thought we won a football game with how excited we were. That feeling of accomplishment, of skills built up over time can’t be replicated. I can’t type in a sentence and something’s regurgitated to me and feel good about myself. Being an artist and being a creative is all about the journey.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salomonshawn/?hl=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shawnsalomon9317

Image Credits

Maya Corwin, Isabella Kahn, Phanaphotos