Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; I spent much of my youth in the basement of my famliy’s weekly newspaper ‘The Winston-Salem Chronicle’, it was there I discovered a love for writing, sports, and the art of story telling.
During my high-school years I was blessed to be able to write for the paper where I lended my voice to articles about local sports and entertainment. I went off to college to pursue a mass communication degree and return home to work for the paper I grew up in.
During college at North Carolina Central University I began to find my niche as a creative writer. In 2006 I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina and try my hand at movie making.
It was in Cape Fear Community College’s Film and Video Production program that I learned exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I quickly latched on to producing and editing my own film projects. It became my hobby, my passion, and my new life’s purpose.
In February 2010, I premiered my student film “WHATDOGSEE” at a local bar in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. A project I shot, directed, edited and co-wrote, the film went on to be an official selection in the Twin Rivers Film Festival and was featured in the North Carolina Student Film Showcase.
After college, I took on any internship that would have me. I digitized the VHS collection at the Cape Fear Museum, worked for free on any local production I could find and in August of 2010, I joined Legion Productions as an intern.
As a full service production company, Legion had their hand in every aspect of filmmaking. From editing the behind-the-scenes features for the TV show “One Tree Hill” to working as a studio post house for the Screen Gems film studio; processing dailies for feature films to producing the popular “Magpul Dynamics” DVD series, I was able to learn from professionals while gaining real world experience in the industry.
What started as an internship in 2010, went to a part-time job, the to full-time to eventually becoming the lead editor and production manager by 2013.
Due to the new state film tax incentive legislation passed in 2013, Legion was forced to close its doors in North Carolina and move back to Los Angeles. I used the connections I had gained in my 3 years at Legion to remain busy as a freelance filmmaker.
I edited my first feature documentary that same year, a film directed by Nate Daniel, the same person to hire me as an intern in 2010. Daniel’s “Bound by Sea” was my first foray in the documentary genre and that film went on to win a “Best Editing” award at the Los Angeles New Wave Film Festival.
By 2014, I had found my way into another Wilmington, North Carolina post house. This time it was Lighthouse Films where I was brought on to help edit an ‘American Idol’ style reality show to find the next best thing in hip-hop.
That pilot was eventually sold to BET where it aired in August of 2016, by then I had moved to Charlotte, North Carolina where I had become a partner in a sports media start up called “HBCU Gameday”; a digital platform dedicated to high quality coverage of the athletics programs of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
As a partner with HBCU Gameday, we have revolutionized the way HBCU sports are covered and presented to the world. We are the first and only HBCU Sports platform with our own Roku and Amazon FireTV channels, our website reaches over 1 million people annually and we’ve produced multiple in-house documentaries that have received much critical acclaim.
With emerging technology changing the digital media world, in 2017 I took an ambitious step to bring myself to the cutting edge of content delivery by enrolling in “The Coding Bootcamp” at UNC-Charlotte.
Learning coding skills was a perfect compliment to my filmmaking repertoire. Not only would I be able to provide high quality video content, I am now able to deliver said content right to the audience’s door step by building dynamic responsive websites and mobile apps and building customized OTT channels.
As the popular Arabic Proverb says… “What is coming is better than what is gone” and I look forward to a future full of professional growth, personal prosperity, groundbreaking achievements, and new partnerships, hopefully…with you.
WaliPitt.com 