Today we’d like to introduce you to Sergio Mishchenko
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up on products from California: films, games, and music; it’s always been a special place to me. But my journey began when I came to Hawaii and coincidentally found a band there (at the time I had been playing guitar for about a decade), which is a story of coincidences and people being at the right place at the right time.
That band eventually disintegrated, but prior to that I had started studying entertainment design and discovered fine art. In parallel I began doing photography, which then developed into cinematography and directing. That also opened the world of 3D and VFX later. The next logical step was to move to California, which I did in 2015.
After a few more years in academia, I moved to LA and started working in film/tv industry right off the bat. The various skillset certainly helped in that regard.
That is a very condensed version – the full story would take a few pages!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’m always grateful to my parents, and especially my grandmother – without their support I wouldn’t be where I am at the moment! Most importantly, it gave me time to develop my skills, but more on time shortly.
Looking back, it’s very important to stick to your guns – my dad was skeptical about me playing guitar, only until he saw my high school performance. Same thing with my film/tv journey – once he saw results, he stopped bugging me. 🙂
It’s also crucial to be obsessed about what you do, and oh boy have I always been obsessed! In the words of Socrates, “Our greatest blessings come to us in a way of madness.” Or as my former art instructor Russell Sunabe would say, “Folks, you’ve got to live and breathe art.” Well, I never had it any other way. Of course you have to sacrifice a lot, but it doesn’t seem like it if you are “obsessed”.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve been directing, DPing, doing VFX and 3D for some time now, worked on a couple of shows, some features, but mostly my focus has been commercials, which I’ve done a ton of. Then there are music videos and everything in between of course. Sometimes I wear a few different ‘hats’ on a project, and sometimes it’s only one role.
Aside from that, I’ve been doing photography since 2013, had some gallery stuff a while back. I’ve been playing electric guitar since high school, played in a couple of bands (although I don’t practice nearly as much as I used to, I still record demos every now and then). At the same time, I’ve been studying Ancient Metaphysics for over 5 years in my spare time. And I had been a part of various academia for a while (not that it’s worth mentioning).
I know my case in uncommon, but this salad of disciplines is the result of discovering myself. And speaking of that, ‘know thyself’ is an ancient principle that goes back thousands of years. And by that it’s not about knowing yourself as an individual in a society but knowing your own subjectivity. And that’s where having time comes in handy.
Speaking of that, I was blessed to always have time for myself, which I never liked to waste. If I told anyone how much time I spent on these disciplines, they’d call me crazy. But it never felt like work! In the words of Confucius, “Find what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Does it make me happy? I never liked the word ‘happiness’, but here’s a thought from Thomas Taylor, one of the most prolific Ancient Greek translators who ever lived: “…I shall observe, concerning Felicity, that every being is then happy when it acquires the proper perfection of its nature”. Conventionally, to perfect one’s nature, we need to understand what it is first.
But I went off tangent there. In terms of the ‘known projects’ I worked on, there are HBO shows from 2019, a Hawaiian TV show, music videos and projects for well-known artists, a plethora of commercials… Needless to say, the roles varied on all of these.
As far as the most rewarding projects go, “Spare One” is one of them. Acquiring a Clio statuette was a great honor, and seeing the spot screened at the TCL Theater was fantastic as well. After the screening one guy came to me and said, “Hey I was having a crappy day, but after I watched your ad [“your ad”!] my day got better!” How cool is that?! That’s where the rewarding part comes in, as the audience is an integral part of it! And it’s not for selfish reasons, but rather you knowing that someone else enjoyed, got a laugh, or appreciated something about it.
Then there was a commercial for a Twitch streamer, which I based on certain references. When it premiered, the audience shy of 10000 people (and we know how brutally honest the almighty internet is) loved it so much that I started getting messages asking for more! As usual, various people enjoyed different aspects of it. Morale of these examples: always respect your audience.
Another special thing was my first photography award back in early 2014: receiving something like that 6 months into photography (okay, it was actually about 7 months) gave me confidence to keep going. Sometimes we need to assess whether we are on the right path, so if you are on a journey, I encourage you to get into some festivals/galleries/competitions or whatever suits you, as that can embolden you to continue and realize that you might be doing something right.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Can’t single out something that I would put over everything else, maybe because my childhood was ordinary? But I’ll tell you a random silly fact instead: one of the reasons California has been a special place for me since I was 7 or 8 is because the events of my favorite RPG games of all time, that being Fallout 1 and 2, take place here (also made in LA!).
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sergiovisuals.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sergiovisuals/
Image Credits
Dawn Bowery
Satish Goda
Diane Bondareff
