Dr. Martens are currently in the middle of their second annual Dr. Martens Presents Music and Film Series, focusing on creators in New York and LA.
The series has given LA filmmaker Ali Roberto and New York’s Gabriel Gomez the reins, to create short films for a vast array of artists about their art and their cities.
Confirmed artists are: Blimes and Gab, Cautious Clay, duendita, Frankie & The Witch Fingers, Lauren Ruth Ward, NEZ, Orion Sun, The Regrettes, Rosehardt, Stuyedeyed, Sunflower Bean, and Tolliver.
You can check out the first three episodes on the Dr. Martens site—videos introducing the filmmakers, and Ali Roberto’s first project, Lauren Ruth Ward – along with a teaser for Gabriel Gomez’s first film, Rosehardt.
Gabriel Gomez is a Clio award-winning director, producer, and entrepreneur, and a born and raised New Yorker. He has directed projects for H&M, CNN, Discovery Network, Columbia Records, 300 Entertainment, Mom+Pop Records, TNT, The Guardian, Refinery29, Bon Appetít, and many more, and is also the founder/creative director of Crooked Letter, an entertainment company specializing in film production & the visual branding, curation, and crafting of their roster of talent’s brands & careers.
Here, Gabriel talks about how he got involved with the Dr. Martens Presents project, what it’s been like to be a POC filmmaker and entrepreneur at such a young age, and what the future holds.
How did you get involved with Dr. Martens Presents?
So I got a random call from my agent, Evan, over at Dreambear. They represent me for music video directing. And yeah, he hit me up out of the blue and was like, you’re in the running for this, you’re being considered. Would you be interested? You came recommended.
I still don’t know who recommended me, which is exciting. It’s like a mystery recommendation. We went through the whole process, I spoke to Collide a number of times. And then they passed me through with a few other filmmakers and Dr. Martens picked me, which is very exciting.
How much impact has the pandemic had on the project?
A lot. We’ve had to scale down the crew quite a bit. We’ve had to deal with certain scenarios that I won’t go into the detail of but have affected production and our creative direction for the productions. But honestly, it’s been a crash course in figuring out what is essential to telling a story. And at the end of the day, it’s really just a good story and figuring out what that story is. So all the other things, all the frills, all the additional support, unnecessary gear, crews, trucks, all that stuff.
There’s just no place for it here, and that’s been okay. It’s been really refreshing to just be scrappy about it and tap into the essential heart and soul of every one of these artists’ stories. So I’ve enjoyed that, I’ve enjoyed the effects that have played a role in parsing down our productions. I definitely was frustrated at the beginning, but I’ve grown to love it. We must adapt, right?
What different approaches do you take to the big commercial projects compared with projects like this for upcoming musicians?
Essentially, I don’t think the approach is different at all. I think that with the big commercial projects there’s more of a show that you’re putting on. There’s way more factors, way more cooks in the kitchen. You have more money to play with, there’s more creative possibilities. But there’s also way more roadblocks along the way. There are pros and cons to both.
I love the idea of just me and a small crew and an artist that has something to say, developing a visual experience, so to speak, around their story. But the big commercial projects come with pros as well, you know, you have a lot more to play with, a lot more creative possibilities, because there’s a budget to support it, there are higher stakes of a campaign.
But honestly, I think all of that applies to this project. There have been stakes, there has been a budget to play with. It’s just a little bit different. Usually, I am simply executing something that already exists, it has to exist, somebody has to do it, and then I bring a certain creative flair to that direction. Whereas with this, it was very much like what do you want to do, Gabriel? What is your vision for this? So there’s been a lot of trust. It has been an inverted experience in terms of me just having complete creative control over something and working with what we have to make it happen, so I’ve really enjoyed that.
But I love both. There’s nothing like a huge crew and a big stage and big ideas and seemingly infinite possibilities with the big commercial projects as well. I love both, I really do.
How much inspiration do you take from New York? Where do you find it?
I’m born and raised here. So, when I was like, 16, and really getting into film and making skate videos, and doing the festival thing, New York was the inspiration. Everything was New York. I made films about the subway, everything took place in back alleys, down in Gowanus. The city, the soul of the city, the heartbeat of the city, the aesthetic of the city, the grittiness of the city, that was everything that influenced my style, my stories. And that continues on.
These days, the city’s changing. It was a different experience when I was a skateboarder, 14 years old, cruising around Williamsburg when there was nothing there, just warehouses and a couple little shops here and there. We would get into fights on those blocks, it was a completely different New York. It was very vacant and had a lot of raw soul to the area. I came across that quite a bit growing up, and it has an impact on you. It didn’t scare me, it inspired me.
So now that it’s obviously changed quite a bit in the last decade, you’ve still got those pockets in New York that are inspiring and still have things to offer. There’s so much culture here that’s being overlooked, or not given the opportunity and the possibility, and I love to seek that out and do my best to honor that and give back as much as I take from the spirit of the city, which is definitely complicated right now, definitely heading in a direction that makes me wonder if I want to stay here forever. But at the end of the day, there’s no place like New York, especially Brooklyn.
Do you have a background in playing and/or creating music?
Yeah definitely. My mother was on Broadway for 22 years. My father was a musician, Metropolitan Opera. My stepfather’s in music. I was an actor prior to being a filmmaker. I very much grew up in an artistic, music-based household.
I played sax for a while, and I was a singer. I just didn’t take to that. I was – not to toot my own horn – but I was naturally gifted at those things, but it was almost like because my parents did them professionally, I was like, I don’t want to do that, I want to do my own art.
Still to this day, the biggest role in the editing process of creating and crafting a film is music. Music is everything to me. And I knew I was going to participate in some way, whether that was create a record label or whatever. Managing musical artists felt like the next best thing because I was creatively invested. We were creative partners in developing them as musical acts, so that felt right.
And starting the radio show, just seeing what direction the podcasting world could hold for me is really exciting too. Feels like it scratches that music itch that I will always have because of the environments I grew up in.
In your video, you talk about immersing yourself in all things creative. What’s your earliest memory of doing something creative and realizing that was what you wanted to do with your life?
My best friend is a pretty famous actor. He was in a short film that went to Sundance in 2007, I believe. I was just starting to drift into filmmaking as more than just a skateboarding video art. I wanted to start telling stories with this medium and the skills that I’d amassed. And I went to Sundance with him. I was blown away by the environment, and the culture and the gatherings, and the films I saw. From that point forward, I came back and I was like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to tell stories.
That year, me and my other best friend partnered up. We made a feature film in junior year of high school. It was our big project of the year. It’s about 90 minutes long, it’s somewhere on the internet, you can find it if you work really hard to find it. It was like a teen drama, romance thing. Love triangle kind of story.
We tried a lot of creative things in that film. The last time I watched it was maybe four or five years ago. Me and a few friends were like, this is structurally almost a perfect film. It’s obviously ridiculous in so many ways to me, but we put a lot of work into that. And from that point forward, I was just like, this is it. No matter what form visual storytelling comes in, I want to be a part of it.
What was it like starting your own production company and going it alone at such a young age?
To me, there was just no other option. I went to SUNY Purchase film school for a semester, I got straight As. I felt like I was relearning things that I had already taught myself over the last four years when I was an actor at LaGuardia High School. And that was it. It wasn’t like any slight towards college or the college experience. It just wasn’t for me. I think it was incredible for a lot of people in my class, but I left, I wanted to be ahead of the curve. I wanted to have my finger on the pulse. I’d been hearing about 5Ds and DSLRs. The film industry was heading digital, and I wanted to know what that was, and see what that was and do my own version of staying ahead of that game. It was just very natural. I never once considered myself too young to do something.
To be honest, I did a lot of bullshitting to get in the room. I would say I knew how to do something, I would say I had experience in something when I didn’t. And I’d just get there and figure it out. You just fake it until you make it, or fake it until that becomes a skill that you’ve amassed. Because in this day and age, I feel like in this new media world, you have to have experience to learn something, but how are you going to learn something without experience? So I think that’s the beauty of the freelance art world. I was an 18/19-year-old little tyke. I was just working my way, weaseling my way into the universes and just saying here I am, I’m gonna do this.
What challenges have you faced as a POC filmmaker? And what advice would you give to young people of color who want to get into filmmaking? Has it changed over the years for better or for worse?
Damn, that’s a loaded question, because I, like most people of color this year, have been feeling the effects of the world. I’m incredibly privileged in so many ways, but identity is identity, and I’ve been reconciling with a lot of things that I sort of put on the back burner in my head, or would deal with to appease a client. And honestly, feeling somewhat tokenized within a lot of the new media realms that content occupies.
But I never really considered it or thought about it in a certain light. It’s been a journey to come to terms with the fact that it’s hard. It’s hard. And I’m not referring to my specific experience coming up as an artist, I’m referring to finding a balance of all the considerations that go into feeling comfortable and acknowledging my truth. But I am embracing my Hispanic heritage, and I’m owning it, and I’m wearing it proudly right now, because it’s me. I think that people have marginalized communities. There’s no more time to compartmentalize us, it’s time to start putting us first and putting us forward.
And I just want to say that I am so much more privileged than so many people in this world. So to me, I have no other choice but to uplift voices of those communities and prioritize voices of those communities. Because they’ve been silenced for way too long.
But in terms of the era of filmmaking, I think to an uncomfortable degree, it’s going to inclusion and recognizing and prioritizing. Diversity is going to be the trend over the next couple of years. And I think that within that it’s going to come with its own complications. I think the benefit of that is that there will be more space made for people of color, and people of marginalized communities to have their voice. But I also think that we live in a pretty convoluted, capitalist world, and everybody’s trying to make a dollar off of somebody. So there’s gonna be a lot of discomfort, and a lot of tokenizing, and a lot of taking advantage of. But that’s to be seen, I honestly think that we will work those kinks out.
The first step is getting people of color and people in these communities first in line, and from there, it’s about drawing boundaries in a way that is not regressive. I don’t want to say progressive, because that’s such a triggering word these days, but it’s working towards the betterness of the world and the equality of the world. There’s just no more time for anything else.
What plans do you have for the future?
A lot! This year has been crazy. I didn’t do a single thing in my industry for about five months and then directed a pilot for Discovery, which got greenlit to go to series for a documentary series. The Dr. Martens project, Rosehardt has a second album coming out sometime next year.
It’s insanely busy right now. I really want commercial representation. I think that would be really exciting and thrilling, putting that out into the ether to manifest.
But yeah, just growing the company. Growing what we offer, growing our capacity and our resources and our community, and trying to stay level headed along the way.
Anything else you’d like to add or talk about?
As artists let’s just tell the right stories. Let’s partner with the right people, and the right institutions, and the right companies. Let’s do everything we can to recognize our power in this godforsaken industry, and really try and make some change with the work we’re making.
I think a common frustration is that the client thinks I’m a magician, that I can just do this. We are magicians, and we do have immense power. We do have these tools that very few people have, and we need to utilize. And by tools, I don’t mean technology and devices, I mean voices, and intuitions. I think that we need to really hone in on what those tools can actually do for good in this world, and put it into practice.
I believe in us, I believe in artists of color, I believe in art, I believe in the power of people. As terrified as I am for the world, I’m also incredibly grateful to be alive right now, and see what happens, and do everything I can to affect the right things in the right ways, as best I can, and hopefully leave some sort of positive impact on the world, a little bit of a legacy. And by legacy, I don’t mean a vain legacy or, a self-important legacy. A legacy that affects others and inspires others to make work that has said positive effects on the world.
Thank you guys, I really appreciate it. I’m very grateful for ya’ll. I love New Noise, I think it’s a really cool magazine and digital platform. So, yes, thank you for having me. Appreciate ya’ll!
Check out our interview with Ali Roberto here. The Dr. Martens Presents: Filmmaker Series Rosehardt video premieres 11/24 on the Dr. Martens Instagram.
Images courtesy of Dr. Martens and Gabriel Gomez. Featured image by Alice Plati.
