Theodore Booker’s favorite movie is The Karate Kid but for the longest time, he couldn’t figure out why he liked telling stories centered around father and son or mentor and mentee relationships. Once he remembered the movies he liked growing up, everything clicked for Booker, who said the film “embodies a son learning about [and] from his father”.

Booker is a self described director, producer, writer, editor, and rapper from Southern Virginia whose love for music and film started in middle school and learned how to shoot and edit music videos in high school. His love for film came from watching special features on DVDs when he was younger and growing up around singers and musicians in church influenced his penchant for music.

Booker attended Stevenson University and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where he received a bachelor’s in Film, Video and Theatre and master’s in Filmmaking respectively. He said he learned how to technically make movies at Stevenson and learned how to understand and relay them to an audience at MICA.

Booker said what he liked most about filmmaking is the editing process.

“There’s something about seeing a film physically come together that’s really satisfying to watch,” Booker said. “I think for me, the vision of a film really isn’t tangible until it gets to the editing stage.”

Booker made two short films during his time of higher learning: 16, which follows a young college student’s aspirations of being a rapper and his pastor father’s efforts to block that dream; and The Essence (which was screened at the Best of Baltimore Student Film Festival and the Fatherhood Image Film Festival), Booker’s grad thesis film about a music teacher who has to put aside his issues to put on a karaoke tribute at his mentor’s funeral. 

“In 16, I wanted people, specifically parents, to know that their children will have gifts that they may not understand fully. Despite that, it is their job to be there for their children, help them navigate those gifts, and figure out what it is their children are meant to do with them,” Booker said. “The Essence was  inspired by an English professor I had in school who introduced my class to the world of karaoke singing. The only particular lessons I wanted to include in this film was perseverance and how music is a great way to bring people together.”

Booker said 16 is the more personal of the the two as he experienced portions of it with his mother, who is a minister, and he received a warm public response to the film. He has not shared The Essence with the public yet but plans to virtually premiere it on social media soon. 

Though Booker thinks he was successful in conveying his messages, he noted that creatives can be hard on themselves; despite being proud of his films, he said he knows they could be better with the knowledge he has now. 

Booker is currently the adjunct film professor at John Tyler Community College and said his journey to education was interesting. Teaching wasn’t on his radar initially but after seeing a friend do it in a fun way, Booker became interested and applied after seeing a job opening at the school. He teaches basic filmmaking classes – digital editing, acting for the camera and film appreciation – and believes he has had a positive impact on his students.

“I have had many of the same students in more than one class, so it feels great to know they put their trust in me each time to teach them what they need to know. One of my favorite parts of being a professor is getting a student hip to a film that they may have never known about had they not taken the class,” Booker said. “It is great seeing the looks on their faces when they watch a French New Wave film for the first time or see an older film one of their favorites was inspired by. ”

Booker said he thinks a film is great if you wish you made it after watching it and if it utilizes every tool at its disposal to relay the story in an effective and satisfying way. His list of film inspirations changes periodically, but he’s currently inspired by Two Distant Strangers and A Concerto is a Conversation (include links for both).

“Two Distant Strangers … is about a young black man who leaves a one-night stand and is killed by a cop. When he wakes up the next morning, thinking that it was a dream, he soon realizes that he is in an infinite time loop and must figure out how to get out of it. It sounds morbid, but it utilizes the time loop to make a great point about police brutality and to be honest, I wish I wrote it,” Booker said. “The second short is called A Concerto is a Conversation … [it] is a documentary about a black music composer who has a conversation with his grandfather about how times have changed for them as black men. The interviews are not shot traditionally, but more so like a conversation and I really dug that aspect about the film.”

Booker said he’s been taking the time to study different filmmakers and the recurring themes in their work so he doesn’t have a favorite director yet. He named Michael Shannon as his favorite actor (because of his versatility) and said he’s been a huge fan of Marvel Studios’ president Kevin Feige recently because of Booker’s fascination with successful movie franchises that are also liked by the general public.

Filmmaking is Booker’s main focus but he said he is making his way back to rapping after battling the writer’s block that followed the release of his third musical project (between 2012 and 2014, he released three mixtapes on DatPiff – Journey, Hello World and L.I.F.E – whose subject matter dealt with his life and what he learned from it from the ages of 18 to 20). He doesn’t have much practice shooting music videos so he hopes to explore that more, either through his own music or other artists.

In the meantime, Booker is awaiting the status of the grant he applied for, which would provide the funding needed to make four short films that will be used as learning materials for future editing classes. The films would be written and directed by Booker and a colleague, and he is also toying around with writing his feature length film.

Before parting, Booker shared his advice for aspiring filmmakers.

“This may sound cliché but the advice I give to most aspiring filmmakers is to watch movies. To be more specific, I tell them to watch things that they wouldn’t typically want to watch. Sure, you could learn how to be a filmmaker from watching your favorites,” Booker said, “but those are only a small group of fish in a huge ocean of films that you could learn from. Oh, I also tell them to watch bad films as well. Those teach you what not to do and some of them are just fun, despite being bad.”

For more information on Theo, check out his official website and Youtube.