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Meet Israel David Groveman of Downtown, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Israel David Groveman. He just won Best Musical Score (Short/Featurette) and an IIFC Award for Excellence in Filmmaking at the 2017 Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema earlier this month.

Israel David, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I began playing the violin when I was three years old. When I was a teenager, I discovered “neo-classical” music in the form of film scoring and began to study film scoring on my own. I would scrounge together what little savings I had and spend it on nothing but movie soundtracks to the point that family and friends were concerned.

In college at the Catholic University of America and the University of Maryland, I went much deeper and further in my study of the classical arts and music through the violin and began minoring in film scoring while continuing to study film and film scoring on my own. What I didn’t really realize at the time was how much I was actually being drawn to filmmaking from the top down as an art form. I was also studying computer science and was able to pick up new technical developments really quickly.

My artistic path began to ascend almost precisely and exactly with the true rise of digital media as a viable art form. When I was in college there was no such thing as easy digital photography and filmmaking like there are today. With photography, I was asked to assist someone with shooting a wedding, and quite rapidly within about a ten year period, I had shot over 40 weddings, and I was doing commercial, fashion, and cinematic photo and film work. I wrote my first film score as a hired composer, and the documentary was nominated for an Emmy.

I continued to evolve as a filmmaker and film composer throughout this period, so now when I make a film, I am contributing almost 40 years of experience at pretty much every level of the art form. I never anticipated it quite like this, but it is incredibly thrilling and satisfying.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Not at all. I went well over the ten, twenty, thirty thousand hour limit with the violin, and I still have physical effects in my body today just from how much I used to play. I once had to stop playing for a whole semester because I couldn’t open or shut my left hand anymore. I once cut my hand wide open during an important college audition and kept playing with blood streaming down my hand and the violin.

As I focused on almost no other discipline for around 33 years, the violin was a definitive experience – I learned how to “go deep” to the point where’d I often get lost – and part of my soul is always trying to go back there, with every discipline I take on. There is never enough, and there never will be.

I have also fought long term battles between artistic gifting and making a living, and I have stories that only my close friends know, and a lot of people probably wouldn’t believe if they heard them.

Listening to your call or inner gifting is a double entendre – you know it’s right, yet sometimes your world falls apart or denies or actively blocks or opposes you as a direct result of trying to be who you really are.

Those dark times define and test you, though – and they clarify and bolster up what it means to be an artist, and why you are doing things and where true art lies – so when the clouds pass, you are either just nothing, or you return with a renewed vengeance and depth to your art. I believe in the process of becoming nothing – it is the most important step to becoming something.

Please tell us about Israel David Groveman.
I consider myself a digital media artist. While I do a ton of still photography work and have a lot of new work coming soon, clients are increasingly needing more complicated productions including video and sometimes music. I can help with or even complete all three if necessary. Along with a wide range of pro and published professional photography work, I was director of photography for a Western TV Pilot called “Tucker’s War” recently.

I believe what sets me apart is an eye and a heart for emotion and detail informed by a classical infrastructure, combined with a technical acumen and speed that is rare.

I am incredibly proud to have a short film I created all by myself as a featured film in the Idyllwild Film Festival in Idyllwild, CA. in January 2017. It’s a short film called “The Guns Of Wachoiye,” and we shot it in just eight hours in the Mojave Desert a couple years ago. I did all the post work myself including writing the score.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?

I probably would have listened more closely to my internal artistic calling somehow. I grew up in a setting where such things were encouraged, but there was a bit of a lack of identity and calling and independence for other reasons. I am not sure I would have assumed others were correct when they interpreted the way I should think about various topics. I would have taken steps to build my independence and discover my world a bit earlier.

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Portfolio 1: Photo by Israel David Groveman – Model Chloe Dykstra – Clothes by Katie Ellhoffer
Portfolio 2: Photo by Israel David Groveman – Actor Sebastian Siegel
Portfolio 3: Photo by Israel David Groveman – Headpiece by Miss G Designs – Body Paint and Clothes by Michael Rosner
Portfolio 4: Photo by Israel David Groveman – Actor Marcus Shirock
Portfolio 5: Photo and Set Design by Israel David Groveman – makeup and hair by E.R. – Actor Dan Lenick
Portfolio 6: Photo by Israel David Groveman – Featuring Michael Bender, Stacey Bender, Justin Picarri, Heath Harper
Portfolio 7: Photo by Israel David Groveman – Makeup and Hair by Erin Monroe – Model Leah Ford Groveman
Portfolio 8: Photo by Israel David Groveman – Makeup and Hair by Dina Dinechka – Model Fanny Berggren

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