About Me
Aloha!
My name is Nicholas Coogan. I was born in Honolulu, HI, but raised in Norfolk, VA. I am currently a Film major with a production focus at Virginia Tech and I am loving every minute of it. What I eventually want to do in the movie industry is to become a cinematographer, but one thing at a time, right? The reason I got involved in film is because the idea of being able to travel to anytime, dimension…anywhere really, is quite enthralling. It is fun to escape the world we live in and for a moment (even if it only lasts for just 90 minutes or so) and live vicariously through someone else.
I was an extra on a USC graduate student's film thesis entitled "An Illusion of Red and White" which should be coming out at the end of summer 2012.
I know I have always loved movies. I just did not know until watching movies like Abbott and Costello’s The Naughty Nineties (1945) or Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007) and even his latest movie 127 Hours (2010) that this career path is exactly where I want to end up. Certainly my taste in movies are not limited to just Danny Boyle and Abbott and Costello films, but I have accredited much of the realization of my love of movies to them. What these movies helped me realize (as I am sure for many other movie lovers) is that I do not just stop thinking about them shortly after watching them; they resonate with me, they force me to pull focus on what I truly enjoyed about the film. This is what got my attention.
My desire to focus on ultimately becoming a cinematographer stems from wanting to simply mess around with the camera and see what it can (or cannot) do. Being able to manipulate an image to find precisely how the cinematographer wants the audience to feel while watching the film gives the cinematographer a certain kind of control over the audience. I am sure it will be a rewarding career once I am able to interact and observe how people react to each individual scene and the film as a whole.
Some other tidbits about me (not film-related):
I like to travel, scuba dive, play soccer, study the universe and read.
