Meet Richard Bakewell | Director & Director of Photography

In the beginning of my career I worked for a lot of companies, mostly reality shows because it was a consistent paycheck.  However I worked hard for the money, and after a few years of breaking my back and fighting with companies who kept telling me that there was only “this predetermined rate” available I knew I had to make a change.  This take it or leave it approach was not very inspiring to me.  Moreover they were looking for the lowest bidder, not the best person for the position. So I decided to start my own company where I would let third party companies seek me out, and I would be the one to dictate how much money I was going to make as well as the other co-workers I would bring onto the job.

The journey has been difficult. I went to Columbia College Chicago, and was not one of the deans favorites so I didn’t get the letters of recommendation that others got. I ended up doing 3 internships to get my foot in the door, and the last one brought to Los Angeles. It was only supposed to be a four month job, but 18 years later I’m still here.

Ten years ago I made a low budget film called Officer Down for very little money. It was the first time I ever directed, and everyone had an opinion about what I should do and what I shouldn’t do being that it was my first film.  I’ve always been that person who doesn’t care what others think, and I don’t let fear ever stop me from risking it all. You have to take chances, even if it means failure.  No one great got to be where they are by wishing they rolled the dice. On that movie we had fake rain, police cars, stunts, prop guns, trained dogs, children, and it turned out pretty well. And not one person in my circle ever questioned any of my decisions once they saw the final product.

Officer Down was not a box office hit, but it has given me quite a successful career. Because of that film a lot of opportunities have come my way. Most recent is a 1980s throwback science fiction psychological film called Roswell Delirium.  It stars a bunch of actors from the 80s including Anthony Michael Hall, Lisa Whelchel, Reginald VelJohnson, Sam Jones, and Dee Wallace.  Not to mention a handful of rising stars that the world will fall in love with such as Kylee Levien, Arielle Bodenhausen, Ashton Solecki, Kayden Tokarski, Georgia MacPhail, and Romyn Smith.

The film pays homage to everything we ever loved about the 80s.  In this story the cold war actually happens and the US is hit by a wave of nuclear attacks, and those who remain pretend like everything is normal even though they are all experiencing radiation poisoning. Everyone who suffers from radiation sickness goes to look for a place called Spacerock, where Area 51 used to be, in hopes that they find the aliens who they believe can save him. The heart and soul of the film is a teenage girl named Mayday Malone, and played brilliantly by Kylee Levien. We just wrapped production two weeks ago, and I have to say I have never been so proud and excited about a film or I’ve ever worked on before. Can’t wait to share more about the film with you.

If any of my friends came to visit me I would not take them to Hollywood. I wouldn’t want them to be let down by how compact the area really is. I would take them to my favorite three spots… Musso & Franks, The Smokehouse, and a little hole in the wall sushi spot in Burbank called Zono Sushi. And of course I would have to take them hiking. That’s just a tourist staple.