Meet the Finalist: Maverick Moore, "My Dinner with Werner"

What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

When I was really young, I would borrow my aunt’s video camera and record me and my friends skateboarding. After getting my own camera, I became more and more serious about making skateboarding videos over time. I eventually made skate videos for skate shops around Texas, for websites, and independently. I loved shooting and editing and the art of filmmaking in general, so I went to graduate school to learn more about filmmaking (my undergraduate degree wasn’t film-related, so I was more or less self-trained before graduate school). In graduate school, I fell in love with narrative filmmaking and directors like Kubrick, Godard, Herzog, and so on. Ever since then, I’ve been directing, editing, and writing narrative short films.

What's is your all time favorite film? Why is it special to you?

There are so many films I could name, and I should probably mention Burden of Dreams or My Best Fiend since those wild documentaries inspired my short film My Dinner with Werner. Outside of plugging those, I can't pick a single all-time favorite, so I'll just have to list ten films that big time impacted me: A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, The Matrix, Band of Outsiders, Being John Malkovich, To Be or Not to Be, They Live, Sherlock Jr., Arlington Road, and recently Everything Everywhere All At Once.

What tips would you give aspiring filmmakers who are just starting their careers?

Dive in… Watch movies. Read Scripts. Study the masters. Learn from tutorials. Progress through practice. Use what you have to make what you can. Let any limitations you may have inspire and ignite your creativity. And embrace any mistakes you make along the way so that you can grow from them. One thing that deeply inspires me, personally, is Akira Kurosawa’s speech when he received an Honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievements in cinema. At 80 years old, after making multiple masterpieces and shaping cinema as we know it, he told the crowd, “…I’m a little worried because I don’t feel that I understand cinema yet. I really don’t feel that I have yet grasped the essence of cinema. …But what I promise you is that, from now on, I will work as hard as I can at making movies and maybe by following this path, I will achieve an understanding of the true essence of cinema and earn this award.” So, listen to Kurosawa - keep going and keep learning.

Follow the artist on social media:

@maverickfilms