Growing up in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Peter Hadfield and always had a passion for filmmaking. From playing with his father’s video camera, to taking classes in high school, to using his hobby of skateboarding to film tricks with his friends, Hadfield spent his early life doing what he loved.

Hadfield now lives in Toronto, and has had many achievements in his career as a cinematographer. His work has been selected in film festivals such as Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), and he has had four music videos selected as Vimeo Staff Picks.

“I think I’ve always been interested in the way things look and observed the way I felt as I was looking at an object or situation. When I was I kid I would stare at the waves rolling across the Pacific Ocean or the landscape passing by. I had a habit of closing one eye and alternating which eye was open just to look at how the perspective of my view would change,” he described. “Robert Mapplethorpe said ‘It’s all about light.’ To me that meant how the light fell or reflected or got diffused and how that could affect my emotions.”

Hadfield also had the opportunity to work on Bayer’s We Can All Be Remarkable commercial about a device that measures insulin for diabetic athletes.

The commercial features a lot of different athletes performing a variety of sports , so Hadfield says they really had to be on top of their game. He describes shooting the hurdler as the highlight of the experience. It required an electric camera cart called the EXO camera cart, and they fitted a Steadicam arm to it and burned down the track while the hurdler was going. However, he says the challenge came during skating.

“The hardest part was skating and camera operating at the same time. We were shooting with a 9 year-old girl, and I hadn’t skated in a while but I thought I could keep up with a little girl, but she left me in the dust! It was pretty fun that she could skate so much faster than me,” laughed Hadfield.

Hadfield worked alongside director Claire Edmondson on the commercial, and the pair agree they made a dynamic team.

“Peter is great to work with as he is a good collaborator, is relaxed and patient. He listens to your thoughts and ideas, adds his own and is dedicated to finding the best way to making something look good,” said Edmondson. “Peter is a good cinematographer because he’s always looking for the most beautiful way shoot something, the more interesting angle. He is a master at handheld, his composition is always stunning.”

“Claire is amazing. She’s got such an eye for performances and is so in control of what she’s getting out of the talent. It just so happens that my visual taste lines up with hers quite well, so we found that we gelled quite well,” said Hadfield.

The project helped Hadfield with how to handle and communicate with bigger film crews.

“As commercial budgets increase, the amount of people the cinematographer has to manage goes up as well. At a point in commercial cinematography a lot of delegating starts to happen, so having effective communication skills is a must,” he said.

Hadfield was in his twenties studying psychology when he realized he should follow his passion as a cinematographer. He attributes this to the rebellious nature of skateboarding, which helped him with “guerilla filmmaking.”

“When I enrolled in film school, I found that I would be more willing to go to a weird location at three in the morning, or hold on to a camera while hanging out sunroof of a car to get a shot. There’s a sense of danger and immediacy in cinematography that parallels skateboarding that I got really excited about,” he said. “When you’re holding a camera you have to be completely present and conscious of a moment to capture it in the way you want to, and the reward is getting amazing footage, just as when you’re skateboarding or doing anything that demands you to perform physically. You have to be completely focused on what you’re doing to perform and achieve. There’s a rush from that that I still get today.”

That rush is part of the long list of reasons Hadfield loves cinematography. For him, there isn’t just one simple reason to be in the profession. From all the different people he gets to meet by being a cinematographer, to travelling to new places and getting access to interesting places, to the act of creating and capturing images, Hadfield knows he is in the right career.

“I like the fact that holding a camera can either turn me into an observer and distance me from a subject or it can intertwine me with a subject. There’s something very intimate about capturing someone’s image. It makes the people in front of the camera venerable, and if that is met with the same openness from the person holding the camera, some very interesting moments and images can be made that will speak to the viewer,” he said. “I also like improvising with a camera on my shoulder to capture moments with actors or subjects. I like storytelling, and working with directors to figure out the best way to tell a story visually. I like collaborating with other people, and cinematography enables me to do all those things.”

Despite this, there are still challenges that Hadfield thrives of off.

“Shooting isn’t easy. Things never really go ‘according to plan’, so you’re constantly thinking on your feet. It’s a swirling mess of problems and opportunities, and it’s up to the director and cinematographer to guide the production through that mess. They’re the keepers of a film’s visual language. So, it’s a challenge to be able to keep calm, keep a cool head, keep on time, keep on budget, and still get amazing footage. But it happens! So, it’s a high risk/high reward game that’s a bit addictive,” he described.

In the end though, Hadfield says he just wants to be a decent, balanced, caring person and be a role model for young people and future film makers.

“In the future I want to live by a body of water and drive a mint Volvo 240 DL, walk my dog off leash in the forest, have good conversations, shoot film, listen to music and play guitar,” he concluded.

Film Editor Takashi Uchida’s fluid, crisply rhythmic work has earned him a professional reputation as a first rate, fast rising craftsman. Uchida’s skill is reflected in his impressive roster of achievements, credits he has racked up in short order, not only as an editor but also as a director, composer, writer and in visual and special effects. While he followed a somewhat circuitous route, Uchida’s path to Hollywood was almost inevitable.

“I was born and grew up in Tokyo,” Uchida said. “I was just a typical nerdy kid who liked anything film and TV related. I spent my teenage years exploring films from all over the world and the different cities, beliefs and cultures that I discovered in them made me question whether or not I should stay in Tokyo. I ended up deciding to go to the US after high school.”

“Although I always wanted to do film, during college I focused on anthropology, and then upon finishing undergrad, I started focusing on film making. I went to USC School of Cinematic Arts and started my career as film editor.”

At the SCA, Uchida’s natural flair, flawless visual instinct and sense of clarity were immediately apparent, developing an editing style is driven by an artful enthusiasm.  “In the film production program, you learn every aspect of film making during the first year,” Uchida said. “I pretty much like every aspect of film making, but I especially like writing and editing. And if I have to choose which is more cinematic, I believe that editing is the more unique aspect of film making, it really determines the finished film. However boring the footage may be, there’s always a way to make the film better in post-production. I really enjoy that creative capacity.”

Uchida hit the ground running, tabbed by multi-talented performer James Franco to work on Actors Anonymous, the feature adapted from Franco’s own popular novel. With its complex weaving of ten different narrative vignettes, the project was an ideal vehicle to debut Uchida’s deft cutting style.

“Actors Anonymous is one of the films that I am most proud of,” Uchida said. “Not only because it was the first feature I edited, but also because I was working with 10 directors for the project and the result of the collaboration was phenomenal. Every film has different kind of challenges, and struggling with those challenges made the film very unique and emotional, I believe.”

Uchida went on to edit Jessica Darling’s IT LIST, based on the New York Times teen bestseller and starring Disney TV actress and YouTube sensation Chloe East. His ongoing work on the popular Netflix animated series Kong: King of the Apes provides an ideal analog for this talented artist’s professional life: a redefinition of one of film lore’s most abiding, fascinating figures—the oft misunderstood, quasi-human behemoth Kong—that is offered to audiences on the non-traditional web-based Netflix platform, a melding of past and future that reflects Uchida’s solid grounding in film history and his singular, beyond-the-horizon creative perspective.

“Kong was the second animation editing I did,” Uchida said. “I had actually made a couple of animation shorts myself so the opportunity to edit Kong was really exciting to me. One thing I’ve learned is that an editor must know the importance of ‘one frame.’ Film is usually 24 frames per second, so one frame is almost 0.042 second. And indeed that tiny difference actually matters. Kong was reminded me of that importance, it had a lot of action sequences and it was a great experience to see how that one frame can make a scene much better.”

His innate grasp on the intricate technical delicacy each instant of every project demands elevates Uchida to a plateau of his own, and the editor is keeping busy, currently working the post-production end of Rio, another feature adapted from a James Franco novel.

“Film editing is the most unique and creative phase in film making,” Uchida said. “It is a magic of time and the visual. It is very instinctive and creative, but also very logical and knowledge-based. It mixes both, like where the river meets the ocean. And combining  intuition and logic is so complicated, it’s almost impossible to consciously grasp. But that’s exactly why I want to keep doing it.”

Imagine that you wake up hanging upside down in a tree, not knowing how you got there. You look down and see zombies. What do you do? Most of us have seen enough episodes of The Walking Dead to know how to handle the situation. You get down as quickly as possible, avoid the zombies, and try to find living companions to band together with in order to survive. Easier said than done…and what about that troubling amnesia? That leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It’s an interesting premise; part horror movie and part action film. These are the thoughts of Bruno Nunez Romagnoli when he decided to make his first film Zombie Games. Bruno wanted to film his first big project in his homeland of Argentina with a large cast and zombies are…well, popular for lack of a better word. He reveals, “It’s not that I’m the biggest fan of zombie movies. I’ve seen the films and television shows that most people have seen. I wanted to do something new with the genre. The premise is that of a zombie film but it is actually an action movie. The twist in Zombie Games is that it actually takes place in a videogame. It is a computer reality.”

Romagnoli plays the lead character Dennis in Zombie Games. In the tradition of Hollywood icons like Sylvester Stallone, Bruno not only starred in his first big film but he wrote and directed it. This is a herculean task to say the least, made somewhat more ominous by the fact that it was not planned. Romagnoli recalls, “I had studied acting and directing in my homeland of Argentina and I wanted this first film to be a big production. I had written it and planned on throwing myself heavily into the role. I knew that I would have to be in the best possible shape to be believable to the audience as a real action leading man. That was already daunting enough. It turned out that it was just going to work out better if I was directing because I had this unique idea in my mind and it was very difficult to describe the approach. In the end, it was just going to happen more efficiently and more accurately if I directed myself. Sometimes you have to bite off more than you can chew. I know that there are people who can act and direct at the same time without much difficulty but it was hard for me on this film. I had a second director on some of the shoots because there was physically no way for me to do both. That added a lot of time due to the long conversations between the two of us in order for me to explain how things needed to look.”

The biggest reason for the difficulty in having another director on Zombie Games was the original direction and the look that Bruno wanted. Zombie movies were everywhere but his movie would be at its core an action movie that takes place with the characters trapped inside a video game. Romagnoli explains, “The new approach to the film is that the character are basically trapped inside a videogame, a computer reality where the creatures are the zombies. The editing of the movie itself is determined by the videogame, the glitches, mistakes, holograms, technology; it is kind of a futuristic place. I wouldn’t say that is a horror film, it’s science fiction with action and adventure.” While many movies are creating video games from the premise of a movie to generate revenue, Bruno is reverse engineering this process. His original video game concept didn’t translate completely and he had to tweak some of his concepts. He confirms, “It was very hard to manifest all of the things that I wanted for the film. The first idea was to do it in the forest but with futuristic weapons to create a contrast but it didn’t have the exact look that I was going for.  I have to admit I changed the script about five times before I decided on the final version. Some things were changing while filming, but that’s normal for me because I like to improvise a lot.” One of Bruno’s costars in Zombie Games, Lautaro Bertoglio, was well aware of Romangoli’s tendency to be impetuous commenting, “, Bruno was one of the greatest partners I’ve ever had on set; we got each other’s energy so quick. The connection was powerful in front of the camera. He likes to improvise a lot. He really surprised me in one of the scenes. I was supposed to take a gun out of my bag and point it at him. He didn’t tell me but, he had taken it out of the bag before the scene started. Here I was in the middle of the scene and I was looking for my gun while the camera was rolling…in front of the entire cast and crew! Bruno whistled, I looked at him and he threw me the gun. The reactions were amazing! I was stunned with actual fear in my eyes. He loved it, so it stayed in the movie.”

Although wearing three hats on the making of Zombie Games was quite daunting, Romagnoli is certain that it is what enabled him to successfully achieve the goals he set out for the film. He reveals that, “In all movies you have a hero; the secret to a great lead character is the small details. My character was an antihero. You can see that he doesn’t treat people nicely, so how could the audience like a person like that? What you have to do is just add a small scene where you push the audience to like him. In Zombie Games I made Dennis an Elvis Presley fan. People like these small details. They start liking the character because they recognize something of themselves in him. I think it is also very important is to keep some parts of your character’s life a secret. When the audience knows your character completely they become bored. In real life you don’t know everything about another person; what their true motivation or intent is. Dennis knows how to fight against zombies but you don’t know why. You can see that he knows things about that world that we don’t.  Those details keep the character interesting. As a writer, keeping those things in mind helped me a lot to achieve the character in the moment of filming. If I didn’t have all of these perspectives, I might have pushed for something to be more or less obvious but as the writer/director/lead actor, I knew just how much should come out on camera to the audience. It added to the intrigue and suspense.”

Bruno Nunez Romagnoli is one of those young determined triple threat talents in the vein of Kevin Costner and the aforementioned Sylvester Stallone. He has vision, talent, and the determination to make films even when it seems impossible. It is perhaps most eloquently stated by another of his costars in Zombie Games, James Bonfiglio, in his remark, “The thing I can say about Bruno is that he has presence anywhere he goes. He also has a powerful voice. He can carry a movie on his shoulders without a problem. A lot of actors want to do that but not many can command your attention the way Bruno does. He can take it out and be a leader to the rest of the cast.”

“There is no I in TEAM.” We all know the phrase and exactly what it means; don’t be motivated to be the star. Yet, in some situations there are those individuals who are team players that still manage to get noticed. Monika Smith is one such individual. Although she has spent her entire life being part of a group, she has carved out a very unique career for herself. As a successful model, improv comedian, and actress, she has established herself in Hollywood as a “go to” actress with the skill, looks, and intense work ethic to make any role believable. It is ironic that by spending her entire life aspiring to be part of an ensemble she has become the most memorable person in any group. In a conversation with Smith, she continually directs the praise to those she has worked with and often refers to influences that are ensemble players. Actors frequently use the word generous to describe those acting partners whom enable them to explore creativity and enhance the scene with honesty. If this is the acting benchmark, it seems that being a generous person has resulted in Smith becoming one of Hollywood’s most noticed comedic actresses.

As a young girl, Monika was always pulled towards comedy. It was always the edgy and experimental forms that gained her attention, such as Saturday Night Live and Canada’s own Kids in the Hall. From an early age, Smith knew that she wanted to act and that comedy was the correct expression of that desire. Years later Monika would work with Cheri Oteri (SNL) and Kevin McDonald (Kids in the Hall) while being one of the stars of TBS’s Who Gets the Last Laugh. Smith states that she considers it an important personal achievement, “Making Cheri and Kevin laugh so much was a very gratifying moment for me. When someone who has had such impact on you from a very young age proceeds to give you such compliments and praise about how funny you are it is almost unbelievable.”

Before devoting her life to acting and comedy, Smith had a bright future with both the Ford and Elite modeling agencies. Working as an international model may have been lucrative and enticing for a young girl but she soon realized that denying her true passion of comedic acting would only serve to frustrate her. Charging forward, she began to work with the Second City Touring Company in Toronto. Soon realizing that Los Angeles held even greater opportunities for someone who is driven, she relocated and began working with the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) as well as Second City and Nerdist. Improv sketch comedy was instinctual for her and it wasn’t long before she was teaching at these sketch comedy institutions, including travelling to China to help start their first long form improv school and direct their first show. Second City and UCB have given us some of the most important and recognizable names in comedy including; Bill Murray, Tina Fey, John Candy, Amy Poehler, Adam McKay, among others. Smith confirms that her time with these groups taught her one of the cornerstones of improv sketch comedy. She states, “I think the most important skill I learned from improv is ‘yes-ing’ your partner and what they say to you. It’s a wonderful thing to trust another person implicitly and know that whatever they say I’ll add to and we’ll create something together. I have no idea how many improv scenes or shows I’ve done at this point, but all of them have been different and special.” This perspective and demeanor led to Monika’s starring roles of multiple seasons of shows like MTV’s Disaster Date and TBS’s Who Gets the Last Laugh. These type of shows required actors who were at the highest level of improv comedy. Nick Kriess (Who Gets the Last Laugh producer) comments, “Who Gets the Last Laugh? was a hit due in large part to Monika’s extensive improv background.  Monika has managed to make a strong career out of her fantastic comedic sensibilities and her amazing way of always knowing the best direction to take a scene in no matter what is thrown her way.” Joel Zimmer (Disaster Date producer) adds, “There was no possible way that Disaster Date would work without Monika taking control.  The show called for Monika to play her character for hours at a time.  There were no cuts like a normal production.  Only an actor with an abundance of improv talent like Monika could convince unsuspecting contestants that this was a real date and that she was a real person.”

While becoming established as one of LA’s most in demand comedy improv actors, Smith has also directed her career path towards film and television. Adult Swim’s Newsreaders, The Tonight Show, and even Funny or Die (which garnered Smith a best actress award at the 48 Hour Film Festival for ‘Les Douchbags Horribles’) have all made use of Monika’s exceptional talent, among many others. Actress Brea Grant (Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Dexter) is one of the many highly notable actresses who recognize Smith’s abilities and presence. Grant comments, “Monika Smith is one of the best improvisers in Los Angeles right now. She has worked very hard to hone her skills and is both a great teacher and performer. I love working with her because she is always professional and hilarious but also really supports and lifts up anyone who she is working with. She is a comedian to watch as she will be huge in the next few years.”

Most recently, Monika has been known to viewers as Sylvia on the STARZ series Blunt Talk. Playing a porn star involved with Adrian Scarborough (Gosford Park, The King’s Speech)’s character and acting in scenes with luminaries like Patrick Stewart (the star of Blunt Talk), she brings an endearing side to her character’s provocative profession. The ensemble cast could easily be intimidating for any actor but Smith seems to handle herself with the same confidence and comfort she has exhibited in so many less scripted venues. Duncan Birmingham (writer/producer for Blunt Talk) declares, “Monika is one of the best actors I have worked with during my illustrious career.  I have worked with the likes of the tremendously gifted, Oscar nominated director David Fincher, and currently, the legendary Patrick Stewart (who was nominated for a Golden Globe for Blunt Talk), but Monika holds her ground with those luminaries with ease.” Smith’s performances became so successful that her role, which was added part way through season one, was added to the second season of Blunt Talk.

Monika Smith’s story is literally the Hollywood Dream. A small girl from another country, with stars in her eyes, works hard to become a peer to the gifted creative individuals who inspired her. With self determination, hard work, and a large dose of talent, Smith has created the situations that have led to her success while constantly challenging herself to evolve. Part of what makes it so endearing is that she is constantly focusing on the opportunity to place focus on the talented professionals with whom she is surrounded. As the arc of her career continues to ascend, it will be exciting to see the new challenges that she will undoubtedly take on.