Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathaniel Paull.
Hi Nathaniel, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born and raised in St. Louis. My parents said as a baby I suffered from constant ear infections and would cry a lot because of the pain but if they put on a movie to distract me I would go silent, and hypnotically stare at the screen for the next 90 minutes so I guess I’ve always been in love with the concept of movies. I remember wanting to make movies as far back as 4 years old when I figured out the concept that movies come from somebodies imagination, from that point on I wanted to put what came out of my imagination onto the screen. My first shot at filmmaking came when in 2010 when I was 19, in the early days of YouTube. When I discovered that you could basically make TV and put it on YouTube I knew I had to create something. so I put up flyers in my community college and put out local casting calls on St. Louis websites, for a live action parody web series of Pokemon called “Pokemon Pals”. I played Ash and I got a few other people to basically dress up in cosplay and act in the woods with me, and we filmed it on a digital camera. “Pokemon Pals”turned into a huge success, there were a few episodes that cracked 2 million views, and the web series got 15 million views total and thousands of subscribers, and local anime conventions invited me as a guest star. This went on for about two years. After Pokemon Pals I attended a community college film school in LA for a semester, and the teachers told me it was cheaper to just learn filmmaking on my own. Through I spent my 20’s writing a lot of scripts that never got made which is normal in the business, but as the years went on the concept of directing movies devolved from a potential career, into a dream, and eventually a pipe dream, and by my late 20’s it didn’t feel like it wasn’t ever going to happen. Then at 28 I grew tired of waiting for things to change and decided I was going to use whatever resources were available, crownfunding, and whatever money I could get ahold of to film something which wound up being a 52 minute comedy called “Rock Bottom”, and I don’t really know how to define it. It’s too long to be considered a short film and too short to be considered a feature, it’s an abomination, but people liked it and it made me want to make my own movies completely outside of a studio. And wanting to make comedies on a self financed budget I thought rockumentaries I thought mockumentaries were the perfect film style for what I was doing. And over the next 5 years, I have been blessed enough to have been able to make 2 feature length mockumentaties. My latest movie “Heathens” is currently going through its festival run.
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Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
In general making movies is never a smooth road, because so much can go wrong it is always going to partly come down to luck. To me filmmaking feels like gambling and so far I guess I won a few times in terms of the movie actually being made. Learning how to make my art profitable is the next struggle I am going to be facing in the coming years, but I am going to do my best to see if I can pull it off, I think luck might once again be a factor.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am an artist, it eats me up inside when I am unable to create. The medium of art I would like express myself with is filmmaking and the types of films I am interested in making are comedies, though there is something I am collaborating on which isn’t meant to be a comedy. What I am most proud of is the “Pokemon Pals” web series because it had a fanbase of thousands of people and got 15 million views on Youtube. And I am also proud that I was able to make 2 features in the past 5 years. I am especially proud of my latest movie “Heathens” because it has gotten the most positive feedback of anything I’ve ever made in the past 15 years. I think what sets me apart is I have a style of story telling, that serves as my finger print. My movies are about different topics but there are similarities because they are all coming from the same mind.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
Playing the James Bond game GoldenEye after school on the N64 at my friend’s house with his brother and his brother’s friend.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7048690/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanielpaull/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nathaniel.paull/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@NathanielPaullHits
