About me
I'm a 22-year old student, photographer, filmmaker and IT geek. I was born in the UK before moving to Switzerland at the age of 11.
Being able to only speak a few words in the local language upon my arrival, the first few years were a struggle (ironically, resembling my first years in the UK). During my first year in Switzerland, I wrote a blog which helped me to cope by voicing some of my struggles with a touch of humour.
Despite this, much to my own disbelief, I somehow managed to stay on top, learning French and currently studying Microengineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, one of Switzerland's two leading technical universities.
I'm doing my best, alongside university, to continue developing my programming skills (particular website design) and travelling Europe, in the hope of capturing new and unique images, on photo or film.
What is MasterMovies?
I came up with the name MasterMovies when I was eight years old, as I was starting to experiment with my first video productions. I used the name as a means to make my work sound more official, buying the mastermovies.co.uk domain to complete the corporate image.
My first few "films" were published under the name MasterMovies Productions, with several variants such as MasterMovies Ultimate and MasterMovies Films popping up. Today, I continue to use MasterMovies as my publishing name, although the website serves more as my portfolio (and a playground for me to play around with geeky stuff!).
C++#include <iostream>#include <string>using namespace std;
int main() { cout << "Hello world!" << endl;
return 0;
}Programming
I've been programming since the age of eight, when I wrote my first line of code in Lua to interact with a virtual game world. I continued to dissect existing scripts, before slowly getting more involved with web design (and web-related programming) to accompany the old mastermovies.co.uk website.
Today I'm studying C++, courtesy of university, while continuing to experiment with other languages in my own projects.
My IT experience
The truth is that there is no one size fits all solution in IT. Everything has its merits and its flaws. The best option is the one that the developer/engineer is most familiar with and can manipulate with ease to achieve the end result, a delicate balance to do the best you can with what you have at your disposal, while reducing the flaws as much as possible.
Over the years I've accumulated a wide variety of programming and general IT hardware and software knowledge. My personal projects, such as this website, have provided me with opportunities to create real-world applications using everything from Python to PHP, Postfix to Postgres and Powerpoint to Premiere Pro (there are a lot of things that start with P!).
I'm most comfortable in the web development world, overcomplicating simple ideas like a simple film streaming page into a React+NodeJS+Postgres delivery system, rate-limited, using a RESTful-based API, JWT authentication, ... Web development a beautifully visual and rewarding experience, very easy to get into (but extremely difficult to perfect).
Photography
My interest for photography arose a few years after my first film, when the technical aspects of an image, such as the shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings (the three pillars of capturing an image) started taking precedence. Photography reverts back to the basics, focussing more on composition and lighting, the art of being able use that small window to peak into the world and capture the best snapshot possible.
That's where their similarities end, both film and photography then diverge creatively and technically. Film remains, in my opinion, a superset over photography. Both fields have their specialities, but photography skills are greatly beneficial in film, which extends upon the basic concepts of capturing an image and infuses it with dynamic motion, requiring more people, more time, far more data, but providing a unique and absorbing story.
My camera is a permanent companion when travelling. The thought of the unique pictures, very few of which I end up publishing, is what I look forward to most when looking at the world with my own eyes.
Filmmaking
My very first film was a short experiment that I made with a friend using the original Windows Movie Maker (also around the age of 8). It was the first MasterMovies-branded production. Since then I've experimented with a variety of different video software, such as Sony Vegas Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Davinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro (which is currently my go-to solution) across a wide range of personal, professional and educational projects.
Filmmaking is one of my greatest passions, I often find myself admiring the visual quality of an advertisement or short video while remaining oblivious to the content or product. In my opinion, video is a delicately complex fusion of a great many factors, ranging from sound integration to colour science, that must work in perfect harmony to deliver a great result, and if done correctly, has an unrivalled reach in today's society.
Despite this, and much to my disappointment, making films is extremely time-consuming, and therefore remains a secondary hobby alongside my studies.
To date, I have invested myself in
Glacier releases
Other videos
Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves.
— Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu