Exploring Life & Business with Catherine Deptuch of Vulcat Studio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Catherine Deptuch.

Hi Catherine, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I am a woman of many hats, I literally have over forty of them in my collection ranging from cloches to berets to floppy hats to caps from my travels and adventures in life. I got my first little blue hat when I was born in New Jersey, I grew up in Whitehouse Station – a rural-suburban small town where buffalo graze and deer hit our cars. There, I was raised by Polish parents who became American citizens after immigrating in 1989. I grew up speaking both English and Polish, telling stories that I came up with to my family and friends in both languages. Since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer, a hat I still carry to this day. At the same time, my parents exposed me to both classic Hollywood movies and international films like Polish classics from Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, and Krzysztof Kieslowski and French and Italian films of Agnes Varda, Francois Truffaut, Claude Lelouch, and Federico Fellini. They also introduced me to music from classics of Chopin and Debussy and jazz from all around the world that we would listen to at the underground jazz club in Krakow, Piwnica Pod Baranami, and at the Blue Note jazz club in New York City. On top of this, I love skiing, hiking, traveling, canyoneering, whale watching, Albert Einstein, badminton, astronomy, physics, improv theatre, poetry, and more. I could not just pick one hat, one passion, above all else! Film was a vessel that could hold all the hats on my head, an amalgamation of artists and worlds coming together to tell whatever story I put on paper onto the screen. When I put those together, I googled “film summer camps in New York” in 2011 and stumbled upon New York Film Academy. After my Dad took me on the NJ Transit to the PATH to right around Wall Street where my first class was and my first pitch, I was hooked and could never go back.

Shortly afterwards, I started my production company and website, Vulcat Studio and www.vulcat.com created a Film Society and Film Festival at my high school and shot whatever short films and music videos I could. That dedication, passion, and hard work led me to getting into the best film school in the world: the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. There, I was inspired by incredible professors, a beyond-talented cohort of artists, fantastic internships (HBO, Indian Paintbrush, Writ-Large, Jim Henson Company, Voltage Pictures) and experiences film-related and otherwise that informed me as an artist and storyteller. In 2020, I graduated with my BFA in Film and TV Production into a vast unknown of questions to be questioned and challenges to be overcome with a determination to be curious and succeed.

And with all of this, I managed to hold on to my other passions that sparked it all without being stuck in just one general “filmmaker” hat, playing piano and flute concerts at Carnegie Hall three times in 2016, picking up French to the point where I could speak and intern at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017 with fluency, and fly over powder and weave through moguls skiing at Alta.

I am still that woman of many hats, collecting more along the way that I can put on the hat rack of my budding artistic career.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
With achievements and accolades come hardships and struggles. The first major struggle, especially out of college, was graduating in 2020 where production stopped, my prospective job at a big studio came to a halt, and the TBD messages for upcoming projects to 1st Assistant Direct and Produce flooded my inbox. I was stuck. But the biggest creative struggle at that time of isolation was this constant push from voices in the artistic community saying, “Take advantage of this isolation, you know, Shakespeare wrote ‘King Lear’ in isolation”. Oh goodness, the pressures to complete my first feature script and prep my upcoming short film were daunting. The more I struggled, the more distant my goals seemed. I dreaded the empty page and absent prompt. However, I learned through connecting virtually with my peers and family more as well as picking up the passions of piano playing and learning Italian and fiddling with Icelandic that I needed to be patient with myself. Many artists and heroes of mine in the past have given me the advice, “Be patient, your time will come” and it honestly made me more impatient and stubborn. I wanted everything NOW. Looking back, though, it could not be closer to the truth. I worked as I waited but made that work into an exercise rather than a testament to my potential or the “end all be all”. I balanced life and work and allowed myself to be in the present, working on whatever made me passionate at the time with no judgment put upon myself. I felt freer to explore my brand, my technique, my unique storytelling style. Then, when I least expected it, with much time for preparation paying off, I was ready, and the right opportunities knocked.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Vulcat Studio?
Vulcat Studio is the production company and home to my films, music videos, episodic series, documentaries, and other web creative content, via its website, www.vulcat.com, and other social media platforms. Vulcat is a combination of Vulture and my name Catherine put together, with the logo being of a turkey vulture wearing a beret. The turkey vulture mascot in many ways shares my film philosophy and the philosophy of the brand: circling around the big picture and zeroing in on the details. It also carries itself with an unexpected grace, traveling far and wide through the sky. Our stories currently share a common theme of coming-of-age “at any age”, whether it be a high school puppeteer who struggles to find his voice asking his crush to prom (You Can Call Me Ollie), or a retired Polish sculptor finding beauty in new ways from his long-time muse (Rzezbiarz [The Sculptor]). With this brand and style of storytelling, we like to experiment and push boundaries when it comes to music (mixing classical and jazz), multi-lingual stories (English, Polish, French, and more), and travel. Our films have won numerous accolades and have attended several festivals around the world including but not limited to: Los Angeles, Miami, Prague, Montreal, Venice, and Palm Springs.

Our latest film, “Rzezbiarz [The Sculptor]”, a Polish-English short film, was completed in June 2021 and is now making its way around the festival circuit. For more info and to stay updated, check out www.vulcat.com and follow us on all social media and video platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
There are two quotes that define my way-of-thought and culminate the characteristics I feel are most important to my success… and they both come from one of my heroes, Dr. Albert Einstein. The first one is, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I value both knowledge and imagination in the way they help each other out. I have always been curious, reading, writing, watching, and absorbing all the knowledge I can. I say one of my greatest skills is that I know a little bit about just about every subject, helping me mingle with new people and making them feel welcome, heard, and accepted. From that knowledge, I apply it to my films and storytelling with a boundless stretch of imagination. I would start thinking of a story by having a central question in mind, spending the filmmaking process searching for the answer. From my curiosity and imagination, however, the answer would be three additional questions to think about.

The second quote is “The woman who follows the crowd will go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has been before.” I always wanted to be different: wearing hats and colorful clothes to school, going the extra mile with my filmed French projects in grade school or pushing myself with experimental visual poetry in my shorts and music videos. I strive to be independent and walk my own path, regardless of what others think of me and others do around me. At times, it is uncomfortable being alone and different, but when I think of this quote, it motivates me more and truly has led me to meet diverse people from all walks of life around the world, experience discomforts that made me stronger, and develop a unique life journey all my own that has led me to the successes I have achieved and ones hopefully to grow in the near future.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.vulcat.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vulcatstudio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VulcatStudio
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/vulcatstudio
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/VulcatStudio
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9886326/