Today we’d like to introduce you to Brady Skye.
Hi Brady, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born in Orlando, Florida and was adopted a few days later. There is much to be said over the last 34 years but I’ll stick to my life as an artist. I don’t know if I ever became an artist. I think it was always just oxygen to me. It was never a decision I made. I have been creating things ever since I could remember. I can recall making my own space shuttle out of LEGOs without instructions and photographing the builds on a film camera. But the piano was probably my most consistent creative outlet growing up. I could never read the music very well but was able to memorize classical songs like Clair de Lune and learned to love it. I immersed myself in the guitar and a few other instruments as well. Music was always the biggest part of my childhood.
It wasn’t until college that I discovered my true passion for visuals. I tried everything from charcoal drawings to ceramics and watercolor, but as a millennial my countless hours on a computer and an interest in computer science as a teenager led me closer to the digital camera. It was an art form that required the use of a machine and I felt a closer connection to it. I started taking pictures and wanted out of being a mediocre performing business major. Switching to a Communication major with an emphasis in Media Production made the second half of college a lot more enjoyable and easier for me. My grades suddenly went from C’s to A’s. I was learning cinematography, film theory and even performed in some shows at the theatre. I became obsessed with making videos so before graduating, I was doing as much as possible to prepare myself for the real world. I started making local commercials, music videos and helping someone film weddings. I wanted to “get into” the film industry and humbly won some awards at film festivals but my one-year-old daughter kept me living in small St. Augustine, which fortunately led to a quality of life I may not have found otherwise. I’ve now been in St. Augustine since my Freshman Year at Flagler College in 2006 and I love it here. Since graduating with my B.A. I have worked in the Orlando and Jacksonville area for production houses, ad agencies and spent two years creating TV commercials for the PGA TOUR. I am grateful for all of the experiences I have had, and each one has been a stepping stone for me to find my true passion.
I have discovered I am passionate about many things in life, but mostly storytelling, traveling, exploration, history, and aviation. Over the last 3-4 years, among helping my wife with her digital marketing agency when photo and video needs arise, I have built a wedding film business here in St. Augustine and a YouTube channel with millions of views from travel and aviation films. Currently, I am also creating more mixed media visual art and diving into computer-generated imagery software. In keeping up with the fast-moving world of digital art and a diehard community on Twitter, I have just dropped my first NFT Collection and really enjoy creating stills and visual art among my other films. Documentary filmmaking presents a very tedious amount of challenges and the feeling of reward can be few and far between projects. So I fill in the gaps with some visual art that can be completed faster and allows me to celebrate smaller victories of abandonment. In regards to my passion for flying airplanes, I am completely immersed in the 1930’s and 40’s era and convinced I lived my previous life there. I have been restoring a 1947 airplane with a friend at my local airport and documenting the process on my YouTube Channel. My love for flying and creating travel films will merge one day when I get to fly myself and my friends and family to some of the destinations. My travel films have quickly evolved from documenting a trip to now capturing the heart and soul of a location. I am headed to the Yucatan peninsula in January to create a documentary exposing what’s left of the traditional Mayan culture and what we can learn from their beliefs and having a real community. Most people think the Maya civilization is dead, but it is alive and well. I will create this documentary and submit it to film festivals and production companies like Netflix while continuing to make wedding films, digital art, and restoring my vintage airplane. Many of the opportunities I have been given are from an older generation helping me, both family and not, and I am very grateful. There isn’t a day that goes by I am not grateful to look at the clouds and trees. I am on a computer screen a lot, but the physical world is my favorite. Fueled by a love for my friends, this is some of my story so far as an artist.
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?
Some of my biggest struggles as an artist have of course been “networking” – meeting the right people. As an artist, I want to put business last. But the reality is no matter how talented you are or experienced you are, you have to sell yourself if no one else is selling for you. It has by far been the biggest struggle for me, along with making time for my daughter and family. I probably work too much but I’m doing what I love. Some days I question how much I love it, but the mental scars from my once corporate job remind me how much worse it could be, and I am immediately grateful. The other struggle is physical health. Being on a computer and creating constantly is usually counter productive physically. I have always been athletic and in good shape but I discovered a cam-impingement in my hip a few years ago from a horrible pain that would just not go away. It is most common to occur in young, white male athletes so … here I am! And let me tell you, the pain does not go away, especially when sitting. After researching how unsuccessful the surgery is for it, I decided to try to “fix” it in other ways. I have now learned so much more about the human body that perhaps this condition was a blessing in disguise. I have explored chiropractic arts, cold laser therapy, dry needling, rolfing, physical therapy, prolozone injections, stem cell therapy, different diets – you name it. The most success I have had is now working with a biomechanics specialist. That is a physical obstacle I was thrown in recent years, and so far I have progressively been getting better trying to get my body to heal itself on its own. I will continue that journey to staying healthy. Health is wealth. You don’t realize how good you have it until something goes wrong that there isn’t a quick fix for. Now I don’t take it for granted.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Filmmaking is undoubtably a collaborative effort. I have mostly done it alone. To collaborate with someone or group of people on projects would be ideal, and it’s something I am trying to move toward. As far as support goes, just talking to people with similar passions is always motivating and exciting. When someone shows an interest in what you’re doing, it gives you inspiration and vice versa. It is how some of the best ideas happen. I think collaborations happen from friendships and having the right chemistry with someone. Like a relationship with a partner / significant other, when you find that chemistry, it’s important to keep exploring it. That applies to a collaboration with an artist as well and that’s why a lot of directors keep working with the same actors and cinematographers. I have a hard time finding that chemistry with people but when it happens, it’s amazing. It’s why this project in the Yucatan with the Maya families is happening soon.
Contact Info:
- Email: theskyelounge@gmail.com
- Website: www.bradyskye.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/filmtravelfly
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/filmtravelfly
- Twitter: twitter.com/filmtravelfly
- Youtube: youtube.com/bradyskye
Image Credits:
Brady Skye
