By Andy Furman
NKyTribune Reporter
You can be a star. Your story matters.You deserve to be heard.
Those are the life lessons Brandon Faris follows.
Brandon Faris (Photo by Andy Furman/NKyTribune)
“We all deserve to be seen and heard,” Faris, a grad of Lloyd High School, was saying the other day at The Hive in Erlanger.
The 55-year-old Faris tells his stories through film – he’s a Documentary Film editor – but he didn’t start out that way.
“My passion,” he told the Northern Kentucky Tribune, “was always music. My dad taught me guitar when I was four or five. I wanted to be a music producer.”
Faris says the music industry “collapsed” in 2002 – and so did his dream.
“I was producing audio,” he said, “I figured it wasn’t much different from video.”
And, his career was born.
The Current TV Show – on Cable – was requesting user-generated content, he said, “By the way, that show was created by Al Gore.”
“I sent them documentary stories; and I got the so-called ‘Green Light,’” he said. That led to a San Francisco producer calling to have Faris be the Midwest “video story teller.”
“I was shooting with a handicam,” he said. “I bought it to photo the birth of my daughter.”
His work caught the attention of the Zone Communication Group – then based on Cincinnati’s West Side — where he did corporate videos.
“I just wanted more creative,” he said, “So I left Zone in 2013 with my partner – Ryan Woolfolk – and went to Louisville and worked for Leap Frame; now named Spark.”
Brandon Faris (Photo provided)
Faris says he did a PSA spot for Michelle Obama’s Safe Roots for School program. T. Alan Gilleo, owner and CCO of Leap, was impressed.
“He (Alan) wanted to add film and motion,” Faris said.
And in 2020 Brandon Faris was named Creative Director of the entire Leaf Agency.
“I led a team, of 20 creators in the pandemic; and we grew in head-count as well as business,” he said.
How?
“On two things – empathy and abundance,” he said. “It’s a mind-set; everyone can win – and we did. As for the empathy, that’s easy, just figure how to walk in your client’s shoes.”
Brandon Faris did – and still does.
“My first love was always documentary films,” said Faris who attended then Thomas More College and studied film at Columbia College in Chicago.
His break came in 2022 when Joe Vele called him and said: “I need you to edit Billion Dollar Babies” – the true story of the Cabbage Patch Kids.
“Remember,” Faris says, “there’s no written script in documentaries.”
So, Brandon Faris sits in his home/studio in Erlanger — for maybe 12 hours at a clip – looking at raw footage. “And,” he says, “sometimes my decisions aren’t final. I always service the Director.”
The footage, he says is on a hard-drive – and it’s like pieces to a puzzle.
But there’s more to Brandon Faris.
“It may be six-to-10 months to complete work as a Documentary Film Editor,” he said.
And when things are slow – or in-between jobs – Faris, get this – drives an Uber.
“I love to tell stories – big and small. While I’m driving, I created Pocket Docs – short social-media docs; and I shoot them, on my phone. It’s how and where I get my stories.”
Faris says he has three rules for his Pocket Docs:
• Must be done on a phone
• You can’t spend money to create – zero budget
• And you must upload them in eight hours
“My Uber driving fuels my Pocket Docs,” he says, “And gets me stories which I load every Wednesday at 11:11 a.m. on Instagram, and You Tube.
“My main purpose is to inspire and provoke; have people think beyond themselves; and hopefully overcome social ills.”
Oh, when he’s not driving Uber, Brandon Faris was editing the new Peacock Original douc-series – Kings from Queens – The Run DMC Story – the latest music project from Faris.
Last year he wrote and edited Texas Music Revolution featuring Charley Crockett and Kiefer Southerland.
“The challenge is to change and transform,” he says. “I sell transformation, love and hope. And hope people will accept others.”
Oh yes, he’ll find many of those stories behind the wheel when driving for Uber.
