Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Marcus.
Hi Kevin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a bit of an anomaly, in a few ways that most definitely shaped my career, and who I am today. When meeting new people, I like to ask if they are a Los Angeles native. Nine times out of ten, the answer is no. LA is a city where people seem to be from somewhere else. Well, I’m a Los Angeles native. I have a deep connection to this place, and all the layers of people and events that shaped it. I know I am a reflection of this place, and I’m happy to have my identity tied to it.
I was born and grew up in Santa Monica during the 1980s and 1990s. My parents were on the lower income side of things and home was an aging apartment on Lincoln Blvd. The city was in decline. Even as I grew into 1980s pop culture, movies, cartoons, video games, and fast food, I could see the city declining all around me. Every year, there was less. Businesses closing, unhoused populations increasing, crime growing exponentially. I recall whole parts of Los Angeles that we avoided, and not just us- they simply weren’t safe.
Free activities dominated my childhood- parks, the beach, window shopping at the mall. I loved the ocean. I can still feel the echo of the water pulling at my feet after hours of playing in the surf, the sun casting long shadows, the sharp smell of the sea air, and a particular happy sunburnt exhaustion after a long day that you can only experience as a kid.
My parents were different. My mom had narcissistic personality disorder, and my dad was fairly deep on the spectrum. He was never diagnosed while he was alive, but he was probably autistic. We couldn’t share in close confidence, but did participate in activities that helped shape me in a positive way- roadtrips being the best example of that. Roadtrips all over the city. Roadtrips all over southern california. Roadtrips all over the western US. Because of a rather abismal home life and such expansive travel, I developed a sense of wanderlust at a young age, always yearning for what was beyond the horizon as the sun set, keenly observing life in many small towns we passed through, all of which seemed to be fading away.
I had an active imagination as a child. I was on the lonely side of things. I also knew that I was attracted to guys by the time I was 11. And back then, society in the early 1990s, even in liberal Santa Monica were not easy to navigate. My parents would not have accepted it either. And it was never dicussed. Both of them have passed. I’ve let go and moved on.
Photography, particularly landscape photography was an intense interest of mine starting around the time of a roadtrip to the Grand Canyon. I remember the trip, and that first view of the canyon. I remember my mother buying a seasonal calendar of the canyon and three year old me noting the choices for each month, and how evocative each photograph was in representing a mood and time relating to the passage of the seasons.
The deep interest in photography and all I observed over much roadtrip travel collalesqued into attending UCSB, where I majored in Urban Geography and Cultural Anthropology. I was an amatuer photographer starting at the age of fourteen, with my grandfather’s 1970’s era Olympus OM-2 and graduating to a Canon A2E SLR when I was eighteen. I still have both cameras. I’m 44 now.
After time at UCSB, where I was fortunate to be arbitrarily paired up in our freshman year dorm with who turned out to be one of my best friends, and the editor of our production company, I decided to attend the once famous Brooks Institute of Photography and really go for that career. I loved Brooks, the history of the school, the beautiful mansion campus, and took an expanding amount of my own road trips with friends during breaks from class.
When Brooks Institute was sold to a Florida based education corporation at the end of my second year there, I knew an era was over, but I stayed. And when the new corporation bought a former film studio in Ventura where Erin Brockovich was made, I added film courses to my education. My friend from UCSB, Randy, followed me to Brooks, and upon graduation, we started the first production company business of several that have lead me to our current companies, Knowledge Tree Films, and the Knowledge Tree Media Group. It’s been a roller coaster, but we have emerged through various trials and tribulations, both external and internal to where we are today.
I run our creative agency and production company with two of my best friends, Randy and Ray. Several other very close friends are on our various projects. Our clients love us, our energy, and the professional work we do. We’ve adapted to changes in the expectations and possibilities of work in this industry. We’ve acquired new skill sets. And we are continuously evolving our storytelling. These days, we take on commercial clients for video, branding, marketing, and social media jobs. We work on documentaries, and we’ve returned to working on feature films with Fireshoe, a partner production company.
Los Angeles is still home. I’ve seen it come back. Even with its contemporary problems, the city is vibrant. It has a heart. And most importantly, it has a future. The wanderlust is still in me, though. I still yearn to find the place that really feels like home. Perhaps through our work and our travels, I might still find it someday.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
“Watch out, its gonna be a bumpy ride” For some reason I can hear Christopher Walken saying these words. And these words are true. Everyone has family issues and personal baggage. Mine was heftier than many, but other people had it worse. You can only qualify your own life.
That being said, our generation, the Millennials, have had a tough go of it, especially the older Millennials, like me, who can recall an earlier era where certain rites of adulthood seemed inevitable. And then things tuned out differently. The 9/11 attacks happened when I was 21. The Sub-prime mortgage/housing bubble economic crash happened when I was 28. I lost my mom when I was 37 and with it any opportunity for closure. My dad fell terribly ill when I was 39. Then while he was hospitalized, Covid struck. The lingering effects of Covid were still around when he passed in July of 2021.
I do know what it’s like to fall in love. I know many people do not. Butterflies in the stomach are real. I’ve felt them twice. I also felt the terrific heartbreak when things did not work out. I’ve put my trust in people who I considered friends who only took from me. It was a process to remove toxic people from my life, but I did.
Adapting to the rapidly changing world of media production has also been a lot of work. The education I was getting at UCSB and Brooks Institute spoke to 20th century conditions and technology. I almost gave up photography when most of my favorite films were discontinued. Our path to independent movies largely dried up after only a few years in the business when the 2008 economic crisis happened.
All of these events affected me both personally and professionally. I chose to work through them. It’s a nonstop process. Its forced me to reckon with myself, even the parts I never wanted to acknowledge, let alone work through. Doing so has made me a better storyteller. Doing so has made possible the sincere gratitude I have for where I currently am, and for the trusted friends who are with me for a shared journey. Jim James of the band My Morning Jacket wrote lyrics “If it had all been easy, I would not have cared”. He’s right about that.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Knowledge Tree Films.Media.TV?
Our business is two fold, and each part of the business informs the other part. On one side, we run a creative agency and production house for clients. We work in creative development, copywriting, scripting, video production, and post, along with specializing in branding, marketing, and social media programming. We help people, businesses, tourism organization, museums, and many other types of institutions find their voice and their audience. We don’t outsource work- we are the ones who get the job done.
The other side of the business informs this first one: feature film and documentary production. Our nearly 20 years each in the narrative production world puts our creative agency work on a higher level. Most agencies are not connected to narrative production work. Bringing our movie level skill set to the world of advertising gives us and then our clients an advantage. We’re storytellers at heart. We enjoy both worlds and find them challenging and satisfying. Going forward, we are going to continue to gain new clients and new partnerships for feature film and documentary work. It’s who we are.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Honesty, Humility, Curiosity, Determination.
Pricing:
- 6,000: complete one day video shoot with 3-5 minute edit
- 500: 2 hour photo shoot, 3 looks, 6 fully edited photos
- 600: day rate for editing, color, titles/grapics
- 4,000: mini brand book, style guide and logo design
- 25,000: 25% of development funds investment in a feature film
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ktmediagroup.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowledgetreefilms/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KnowledgeTreeFilms
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/90519644/admin/feed/posts/
- Other: https://knowledgetreefilms.com/
Image Credits
photos credited to Kevin Marcus
