The Royal Ocean Film Society is an ongoing series of visual essays that explore film craft and history, and has been an incredibly fun project that I’ve been able to work on alongside the work I do as a freelance editor. Quick origin story: the channel started as a fun little hobby during my last semester of college. Royal Ocean Productions was the name of the production troupe my friends and I formed a couple of years earlier. It was like our version of having a band but instead of getting together to make music, we made movies. At the time, we were all fans of the band Dance Gavin Dance and their album “Whatever I Say is Royal Ocean”. We always liked the sound of that phrase, so we decided to use it for our little company — and when I started the YouTube channel, I ported the name over. Since then, the series has grown into a larger endeavor that combines together a number of my interests - editing, motion graphics, and film criticism - into one combined package that’s one-part documentary and one-part op-ed, all filtered through a personal narrative lens. As time has gone on, I’ve shifted focus away from just churning out content, and have instead extended the typical production period in order to grant each video ample time to be crafted into its best form, and it’s increasingly my goal and hope for each video to stand on its own as a fully-fledged short documentary in and of itself. Whatever the future may hold, making videos on this channel has been an incredible thrill and a crazy ride that I’ve been extremely blessed to take.

The series has received eleven Vimeo Staff Picks, has been included on Sight & Sound’s Best Video Essays of the Year list 2017 - 2022, and has been featured on Wired, Slate, The A.V. Club, The Playlist, Film School Rejects, and No Film School. Featured below are a handful of some of my favorite episodes that I’ve made for the channel: