My Story

MF / 07 Chapters

A creative life,
one chapter at a time.

I didn’t arrive here through one job title or one perfectly planned career. I arrived here through a series of chapters: film sets, cameras, businesses, experiments, successes, detours, new technologies, and a constant curiosity about what might be possible next.

Begin

Michael standing with an NBA player during a commercial production in Los Angeles

01 / Los Angeles

Close enough to see how the machine worked.

One of my earliest windows into the entertainment world came in Los Angeles, where I worked as a stand-in and body double on multiple Nike commercial productions connected to an NBA player.

Those productions gave me a close-up look at a world that had once seemed distant from the outside: cameras, crews, schedules, talent, repetition, precision, and all of the invisible work required to create what eventually appears effortless on screen.

I didn’t know exactly where that experience would lead. I only knew that being around professional production made the process feel real. Filmmaking stopped being something that belonged to somebody else.

View the Nike Commercial

02 / The First Films

Eventually, watching wasn’t enough.

I started making things myself.

One of my early films was entered into a local competition and ultimately screened in a movie theater. Seeing something I had helped create move from an idea to a real theater screen changed the scale of what felt possible.

There is something powerful about sitting in a room with strangers while images you helped make are projected thirty feet tall. It turns filmmaking from an abstraction into a physical experience.

That early chapter stayed with me long after the screening ended.

Low-angle architectural photograph of a glass residential tower framed by trees and blue sky — Selected real estate photography

Elevated lakefront view overlooking Soldier Field, the marina, and Lake Michigan — Selected real estate photography

03 / Photography

Learning to see before learning to explain.

Photography became another major part of my creative life.

Real estate and architectural photography taught me discipline. A room has to feel inviting. Lines have to make sense. Light has to be controlled. Details matter. And the final image has to serve a practical purpose for a client, not simply satisfy the photographer.

That work sharpened the way I compose an image and taught me how to balance creativity with reliability, deadlines, client expectations, and repeatable production.

Even when I wasn’t making films, I was still learning how to tell stories one frame at a time.

04 / Back to Film

The camera started moving again.

Eventually, still images led me back toward moving ones.

I began producing documentary-style work centered on communities, businesses, local history, and the people who give a place its identity. That grew into Lemon Town Films and a series of long-form town documentaries built around interviews, atmosphere, history, and everyday life.

These projects brought together many of the things I had learned separately: interviewing people, working with clients and local leaders, operating cameras, capturing B-roll, flying drones, editing long-form stories, producing promotional material, and taking responsibility for a project from the first conversation through final delivery.

The job was no longer simply to make something look good. It was to understand what mattered, and then find the clearest, most human way to put it on screen.

Explore the Film Work

The Singularity High · performance

05 / Building

Then the tools began changing very quickly.

I’ve always been interested in the technical side of creativity: not technology for its own sake, but technology as a way to make new things possible.

As AI and emerging creative tools accelerated, I began experimenting with workflows that would once have required much larger teams, budgets, or infrastructure. Animation, music, concept development, web experiences, automation, visual effects, and storytelling started overlapping in entirely new ways.

That curiosity eventually became projects such as Lem’s Universe: a growing fictional world that combines film, animation, characters, music, technology, and interactive ideas.

For me, the exciting question has never been, “Can technology replace creativity?”

The better question is, “What can a creative person build now that wasn’t possible before?”

Explore Lem’s Universe

06 / The Signal Moves West

Sometimes the next chapter requires actually moving.

In 2026, I left Chicago and started driving west toward a new life in San Diego. But somewhere along the way, the trip became more than a move. It became a creative process.

As I crossed the country, I began turning what I was experiencing into songs. Different landscapes, cities, stretches of empty highway, memories, uncertainty, excitement, loneliness, freedom, and the feeling of leaving one version of my life behind all found their way into the music.

I started thinking of the process as song journaling. Instead of writing down what happened each day, I was capturing how it felt through music. A place could become a melody. A long drive could become a lyric. A particular moment, landscape, or emotion could become an entire song.

Those songs eventually became The Signal Moves West, a musical journal of the journey from Chicago to San Diego.

By the time I reached the Pacific, I hadn’t simply documented where I had been. I had created a record of who I was becoming along the way.

Listen to The Signal Moves West

Arrive As Light · short film

07 / San Diego

A new coast. The same question.

Today, I’m based in San Diego and still following the question that has been underneath almost everything I’ve done:

How do you take an idea and make it real?

Sometimes the answer is a documentary. Sometimes it’s a photograph. Sometimes it’s a website, an animated world, a piece of music, a book, a campaign, or an experiment with a tool that barely existed a year earlier.

The medium changes.

The reason for making things doesn’t.

The through line

The technology changes.The medium changes.The thread has always been story.

I’m interested in the space where storytelling, production, design, technology, and curiosity meet, and in working with people who are trying to make something worth paying attention to.

Let’s Work Together Back to About

A creative life,one chapter at a time.