Today we’d like to introduce you to Noah Anthony Mezzacappa.
Hi Noah Anthony; so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I first wanted to make movies after watching Martin Scorsese’s ‘Hugo,’ which is about pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès. My friends and I were ‘Star Wars’ obsessives and were already making stop-motions with our LEGO Yoda’s and Obi-Wan’s, and after seeing the special effects, costumes, and sets in Méliès work, I fell in love with filmmaking. I started filming short movies on my dad’s MiniDV camcorder and made my first narrative short with my mom and sisters when I was twelve. It was about an orangutan that goes on a killing spree (the deeper meaning being that I had an orangutan plush toy and wanted to make a movie). As I learned more about the technical demands of filmmaking, I became more resourceful and started making more stripped-down movies with higher production value. In 2015 and 2016, I directed a short film called ‘REC,’ co-written with Lucas Baudry, which won first place in the 2016 Knoxville Film Festival’s high school competition. This was my first experience directing professional actors with the invaluable help of UTK’s Jed Diamond. After that, I made Luna, which premiered in the 2017 Knoxville Film Festival’s high school competition; I used Luna to apply to film schools and was accepted to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. At Tisch, I was introduced to an incredible community of artists that I’m lucky enough to call friends, as well as movies that revolutionized my idea of what filmmaking could do. In 2020, I made a music video called ‘Legends Never Die’ for singer-songwriter Leon Majcen, which premiered on DittyTV. In 2021 I directed ‘Bones,’ a short film about a white supremacist investigating his mother’s disappearance. Made under strict COVID-19 restrictions, with five people on-set (two actors, the cinematographer, the sound mixer, and myself), ‘Bones’ premiered as an Official Selection for the 2022 Nashville Film Festival. In 2022, I directed my thesis film, ‘In Here,’ which is currently in post-production. Having graduated from NYU in May 2022, I now work as a freelance filmmaker on feature films, TV shows, and commercials in New York City, and I continue to work on my projects in my free time, including a chapbook of poetry and a series of music videos for New York label Chinatown Records.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. I’m fortunate to have grown up surrounded by supportive family and friends, as well as teachers like Jed Diamond and West High School’s Kat Furnari and Arielle Street, all of whom went to great lengths to help me make the things I wanted to make. Still, the life of an artist (or anyone else, for that matter) is never easy. Most of us don’t make a living with our work, and the path to finding your voice, the center of any artist’s life, is never-ending and filled with self-doubt. For every acceptance to a film festival, I’ve had twenty rejections. I’ve had experiences in filmmaking that were so emotionally taxing that, at times, I thought I wanted to stop pursuing it altogether. When I feel like that, I try to remind myself that I’ve already won because creation is a privilege that shouldn’t be taken for granted. I don’t write or make movies for money, fame, or to make something that will outlive me. I do it to enrich my life and help me understand it a little more as I lead it. I used to dream about winning an Oscar and would still love to do that, but I try to remember that the filmmakers who win Oscars wake up the following day and go back to making.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a writer and filmmaker. I primarily write poetry and screenplays, though I also write short stories and personal essays. I also have dreams of writing a novel one day. As a filmmaker, I focus on narrative short films and music videos, with the occasional documentary (though my goal is to make a feature film in the next four years). I’m a second-generation American born and raised in Tennessee by two native New Yorkers, so the outsider’s perspective is key to my work. I feel like a northerner in Tennessee, and in New York, I feel like a southerner. I’m in touch with my grandparents’ cultures, but I’m painfully aware of how those cultures are fading away with each generation of my family. My work is often framed within intergenerational relationships and is mainly focused on questions of morality, mortality, and the existential weight of being alive. I’m interested in how we teach ourselves and our children to live in the face of death. I have wide-ranging taste and can find inspiration in anything, but I have a morbid sensibility (as you can tell), so recently, I’ve been very influenced by horror films. In my writing and movies, I often try to capture a feeling of foreboding, the idea that something is wrong, but you can’t figure out what.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I have a good eye for visual storytelling, and I pay a lot of attention to detail. I hope that people resonate with my fascination with language and how we use it to reveal ourselves to and hide from each other; dialogue (or the lack thereof) is as important to my poetry as it is in my films. Still, I’m always learning and trying to improve. Recently, I’ve focused on honing my narrative storytelling; I want my work to be equally rich in style and substance.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.noahmezzacappa.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noahmezzacappa/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/noahmezzacappa
- Other: https://vimeo.com/user54056798
