Photo by Kat Stevens (@kittiepryde)
Marmoset’s Creative Coordinator Alex Dixon grew up on the East Coast, an upbringing that helped shape his identity and workflow. His early years in life began in a diverse neighborhood on the outskirts of Washington D.C. with a limited music and arts presence. After working in the forefront of the emerging hip hop and electronic music scene that was slowly flourishing out of his own backyard, he embarked on a new path of live event curation, event management, music journalism and artist management — working with notable artists from the Washington D.C area like Logic and GoldLink. The murder of George Floyd and ensuing uprising inspired Alex to apply his background to tell a bigger story. The result? A compelling collaboration and a 9 minute documentary.
Alex shares his story below.
After devoting just about every hour outside of my job at Marmoset on the front lines of the current civil unrest that we’re experiencing in Portland, marching, chanting, and capturing as much content as I possibly could I knew there was something greater that I could do to help. I was lucky enough to be able to use my background as a freelance audio/visual tech to amplify the speeches and voices that had a message to share during demonstrations, but I wanted more. I came to the conclusion that I needed to use my skills to make a difference and it needed to go past technical work. Before starting my position as a Creative Coordinator on Marmoset’s Creative Services team, I would travel from state to state creating documentary-style content at music and arts festivals. Unrest: A Civil Rights Story came together as a collaboration between a multitude of creatives based on the West Coast, each donating their time to fight the good fight. These creatives were gracious enough to lend their content to a bigger cause. In order to bring our impact together to its fullest extent, I called my good friend and Marmoset artist Manatee Commune into the mix to score our short documentary. The purpose and intention of the project really felt fitting. Throughout this process, I learned that it wasn’t about the fact that this was an African-American led demonstration, but the importance of collaboration between like-minded individuals with the same mission. This time around, our mission was set to create a visual that others could take home to educate themselves outside of the protests.
– Alex Dixon, Creative Coordinator at Marmoset
Watch the documentary here:
Lead Editor – Frank Rossi
Finisher / Color Grading – Sam Cahill
Finisher – (Jobe Layton) Jobe around the Globe
Producer – Alex Dixon (Originators Media)
Director – Alex Dixon (Originators Media)
Music Score / Composition – Grant l’kayl (Manatee Commune)
Additional Footage – PORTLANDRONE, Joseph Blake, Nik Popp (Puurple), Alex Dixon (Originators Media), David Stevenson
Art Direction – Danny Stephens
Sound (live) – Henry Thomas Fox