Filmmaker.
Creative Technologist.

About

I'm Nelson, a filmmaker and creative technologist in Southern California.

My first two short films, PAOLA and Street of Candles, were both inspired by my wife, Paola.

Before filmmaking, I spent six years in project management and operations. I studied psychology at UC Riverside, and I dance salsa and bachata. Each one shapes a different part of how I make films.

Dancing gave me my sense of rhythm and timing. Musicality influences when I make a cut, when a transition should land, and how I build a scene by introducing one layer before adding the next.

Psychology shapes how I think about characters. I ask how a person would really behave in a particular situation: how they would feel, what they would notice, and how they would perceive what's happening. That context shapes how they relate to other characters and the environment around them.

Project management is how I run a film. I start with an idea and plan the scope, cost, schedule, resources, and requirements. I generate test shots to work through the details before locking the plan. Then I move into execution, reviewing each shot, deciding whether to keep it or rework it, and moving forward from there.

I learned most of this from scratch. After two films, I'm hooked. There's still so much I want to learn about film grammar, cinematography, and filmmaking in general, and I'm excited to keep making more.