Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Taylor
Hi Rachel, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story began in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was born to two loving parents and between biological and chosen family, I had a great support system growing up.
I’ve always been a creative kid who made various kinds of art, and who had no problem seeing a product (fashion, physical art, etc.) that I liked and taking on the challenge of making it myself. My education began at a Montessori school. From there I attended Northwest School of the Arts and finished at an alternative high school/college program where I took my first film related classes.
At 14 years old, I had an interest in graphic design and an Instagram fan page for artists I enjoyed. I was editing pictures like nobody’s business. One day, I decided to put my edited photos in a sequence with background music and thought “Hmm. What about film?” This simple question has since snowballed into a mountain of experiences that have led me to where I am today.
After being accepted to three film programs, I had the opportunity to attend Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Atlanta campus to pursue a bachelor’s in fine arts degree in Film & Television.
I was passionate and eager to get on set and learn. Less than halfway through my first year of college, I was referred to as everybody’s favorite freshman who was always booked, busy and living her best life gaining experience on Graduate thesis sets. This was reflected in my work on the 16 productions I added to my resume within my first two quarters at SCAD. I was on the Dean’s List for majority of my SCAD career.
COVID shut down my school after my first two quarters of classes, so I went back home to Charlotte. While I struggled with the scary time of an unfamiliar virus and televised social injustice, there were two sides to this coin for me. Being at home during COVID presented me with several opportunities that incited the beginning of my career on bigger industry sets. During this time, I earned the role of a Production Assistant day-playing on my first television series, working full-time on my first feature film “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” and a series of commercials and other short-form productions. COVID did a lot more harm than good, but I am oddly grateful for what I was able to gain during that year.
My senior year at SCAD was busy with the production of my capstone film “A Token of the Heart.” It is a suspenseful drama about a kind-hearted and conflicted woman determined to prove her morality, who must fight to escape the extortion of her assignments as a contract killer. I am proud to say that the film was an official selection at multiple festivals in the year after it was completed.
After successfully graduating from SCAD in 3 years, I have continued to build on my career and grow my portfolio with my work on 5 feature films with studios including Lionsgate and Universal Pictures, several commercials, and a plethora of short films.
I have since advanced from earning Production Assistant roles to earning paid roles in my desired department as Cinematographer, 2nd Assistant Camera and Camera Digital Utility. I am grateful for my journey so far, and even more excited to see what the future holds.
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?
Smooth is relative. You can acknowledge that other people may have it harder than you in any number of ways, but that doesn’t mean that your experience of less-than-ideal circumstances should be invalidated.
That said, it has been a smooth road for me for the most part. I am fortunate for always having everything that I needed in life, and most of my wants. There will always be days that are better than others, but when “bad” days come around, I try to remind myself that I made it through previous bad days, and that I will make it through the bad days to come.
Many of my struggles come from me being hard on myself because of the high expectations I have for myself. Growing up, there wasn’t much that I wasn’t good at or couldn’t achieve. As I got older, some things became more difficult and to this day it is not easy for me to accept failure. I’m working on accepting these experiences as opportunities to learn. Some things are more difficult because that’s just the way they are, but others are for unjust reasons beyond my control. I have been on set where people have treated me poorly, spoken unfavorably of me and talked down to me, due to what appeared to be prejudice of my age, gender and race until they observed my skill and experience when I got to set and was able to do the job well. Is it fair? No. Is it a struggle that I cannot control yet have to deal with on a daily basis that may impede on trajectory of my career? Yes. Some people call it “playing the race card” but it is an unfortunate fact of life that I will be denied work or made to work harder for some opportunities because of people’s perceptions and conscious or subconscious prejudices.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a filmmaker with a specialty in cinematography. My other interests lie in screenwriting and modeling. Cinematography is a craft that, to me, provides a sense of fulfillment like no other. Being in an environment where I can use my individual skills and creative eye in collaboration with other people who specialize in something I may not know as much about, and can learn from, is such an amazing opportunity that so many people take for granted. When asked to explain the role to those who are not familiar with filmmaking, I like to use the analogy of a cinematographer acting as a painter, as they use all of the tools of the various departments (camera, lighting, location, art, etc.) like they are paint, brushes and other instruments to bring to life the illustrations of each frame.
I am known amongst my friends and clients for excellent execution of creative composition. My friends and family know me as someone who does my best with the resources I have. I continue to grow my portfolio of equipment, as I strive to increase and improve access to what I have on-hand. I am a determined and dedicated individual who will complete the job that needs to be done to the best of my ability, every time. As an owner/operator of a newly purchased Sony FX3 cinema camera, I look forward to being a great asset to new productions of even greater quality.
I am most proud of my journey. It brings me joy to think about how far I’ve come since the beginning of my college career, and even more so from before then. I am grateful to have been raised with few limitations regarding what I could or couldn’t pursue or achieve. Because of this, I have always been able to pursue my passions. I’ve known that I would end up doing what I love, but just didn’t know exactly how I would get there. I’ve been paid to work in the field of what I love to do since I was 19 years old. I say the word “grateful” a lot because I am. Many people unfortunately do not have the opportunity to do the same.
What sets me apart from others is that I am my own person. Even if you meet another Rachel Olivia Taylor, I can guarantee they will be nothing like me. I have my own plethora of experiences that have made me a well-rounded individual at a young age. I can acknowledge and talk about my privileges both as someone who has never struggled to have their needs met, as well as someone who has experienced several difficulties simply because I am a dark-skinned Black woman moving throughout this world. I am passionate, I am caring, I am joyful, and I am an advocate for others sometimes more than I am for myself. I believe the people, specifically Black and Brown people, of this world deserve better from the powers that be, and I will never shut up about it until it is achieved. I want my work to reflect people who look like me in the most beautiful ways. We are not a monolith, and the systemic hardships we face do not make up the story of our lives, but rather are impediments on our otherwise tremendous history of resilience. What I want for my career as a filmmaker is to continue creatively contributing to stories centered on Black characters; not period pieces or historical dramas that profit off of the trauma Black people have experienced. I’m ready for the next generation of Black in every genre from romance, to action, to sci-fi. I look forward to experiencing my growth as I continue my creative journey through mainstream media as it is today. Ultimately, this is the start of my endeavor to contribute to this ever-evolving industry by broadening representation in the artistic creations presented to the world.
I am open to work worldwide and willing to be a contributor to productions in camera department roles.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I believe that risk taking is not only important, but is a necessity. I’m not the biggest fan of change, and certainly wouldn’t consider myself to be a risk-taker, but I understand that it is a part of life that sometimes needs to be embraced. If you’re comfortable, 9 times out of 10 that means you’re not taking any risks at all, and that means you aren’t allowing yourself the opportunity to grow, or experience change of any kind. I recently opened a fortune cookie that said “Opportunity dances with those courageous enough to get on the dance floor.” Not every risk we take has to be monumental. For me, a risk can be something as small as texting a 1st Assistant Camera person and asking to meet up for coffee, with the goal of learning from them and hoping to earn a job that they recommend me for down the line. It’s not always dropping everything you know to move across the country, or choosing to buy that $10,000 piece of equipment. A risk is something that scares you just enough to put some hesitation in your heart when you think of doing it. A sense of personal fulfillment is what you gain from doing the scary thing anyway.
Three big risks that come to mind were inciting incidents to pivotal transitions of my life. The first is when I left the school I attended from 6th-10th grade and began my junior year of high school at the Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) middle college program. I didn’t have the friends I had spent the previous five years bonding with; I was thrust into classes with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” mentality because people would treat me differently if they knew how young I was in this college environment; and it didn’t help that I was still learning a curriculum that I knew would be of no use to me beyond the final exams at the end of the year. I was miserable for most of the first semester, but I knew that I was there for a reason. Earning transferrable college credits would help my mom pay for the expensive private art school I wanted to attend. Second semester came around and time began flying by as I enrolled in videography, video editing and camera and lighting classes. I was having the time of my life. December 3, 2018 I was accepted to the Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). I was ecstatic. I finished out my senior year strong and, in the Fall of 2019, I moved over four hours away from home (in Atlanta traffic, it definitely felt like more).
Going to SCAD was yet another major risk. It’s an expensive school, I had heard stories about people not being able to handle the workload and expectations, and I didn’t want to let my mom down. My SCAD experience started similarly to that of the middle college. I didn’t have many friends, I didn’t click with my dormmates, and this time I was incredibly homesick. I facetimed my mom every night. I believe that everything happens for a reason and in its own time. Time went on and I was flourishing. “Living my best life” became a frequent phrase of mine. I jumped from film set to film set and quickly gained the reputation as one of the hardest working freshmen many people had ever met. The middle college credits came in handy because by the middle of my freshman year, I was an unofficial “Freshmore” because of the number of credits I had. Things were looking up. Then COVID happened.
The third risk happened as a result of COVID, and I’m not sure what my life would look like now if it hadn’t happened this way. During Spring break of 2021, I was at home in Charlotte, NC; where I had been since they closed the Atlanta campus in March of 2020. I had less than a week before online classes resumed, when my mom heard about a film production coming to town on the radio while she was driving. One IMDb search later, I learned that the 2nd Assistant Director from the first show I ever worked a few days on in December of 2020, was also an AD on the upcoming production. I used the resources at my disposal, and the networking skills that I take great pride in, and soon had my resume sent to his inbox. Emails, texts and calls were exchanged, and before it was all over, I was a 19-year-old officially hired in a full-time position on her first feature film, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” The following Monday, classes resumed and I told my professors about this opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. Spring quarter was full of 12+ hour weekdays on set, and watching class recordings and doing homework on the weekends. It was stressful. I lost my Dean’s List status during this quarter because of my grade in the storyboarding class (I was never much of an illustrator anyway). Summer came, classes ended, and the film wrapped not too long after. Taking this risk led to some sacrifices, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Because of the connections I made on this set, I was booked and busy for the rest of Summer 2021 on commercial sets and other short-form productions as well.
I wouldn’t be who I am without these major risks, or the smaller ones that came along the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rotaylorlegacy.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/rotaylorlegacy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV1buFqiBmHOnFI1t-0I_Jg?view_as=subscriber
- Soundcloud: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11379750/
- Other: https://vimeo.com/rotaylorlegacy
Image Credits
Dylan Duru, Getty Images, Kaya Roy, Neema Belton, Rachel Taylor, Rou Marcellus
