Such Great Heights
A filmmaker discovers his latest muse in Sanibel and Captiva’s natural grandeur
The best part about meeting a friend early on is watching each other grow through life. Cameron Michael and I met when we were just teens. Now 27, I’ve been privileged to witness his ascent as a cinematographer, photographer and motion time- lapser.
In the last few years, Michael’s projects have received attention from the likes of Vimeo, Hulu, USA TODAY and The
Huffington Post. His latest film, Awaken, a visual ecological calendar made for The Beaches of Sanibel and Captiva, recently won the Best Travel & Adventure category in the 18th annual Webby Awards— a program The New York Times calls the “Internet’s highest honor.”
Before Michael heads back to New York, where he lives now, we sit down over a couple of craft beers to discuss the piece.
“I wanted to think of it as me trying to sell this project to people who already lived [ in Southwest Florida],” he says. “If I could impress the people that lived here, what would the people who didn’t live here think?”
Apparently, with over a million views on- and- off the Web ( the short film has also appeared as a commercial on Hulu and Comcast On Demand), Awaken stunned audiences with a world that stretched beyond typical on- island sightings. He captured creatures in their most vulnerable states— baby sea turtles determined to reach the ocean, native birds searching for morning meals and tens of other intimate scenes of life playing out between land, sea and sky, from sunrise to sunset— with previously unseen clarity.
The five- minute 4K video can be viewed in IMAX, but beyond the crystallike definition, it’s the perspective that many continue to respond to. Michael says he drew inspiration from his mother, who passed away just a few years ago.
“She was the reason my family moved to Florida,” he says. “I wanted to honor her.”
The thought of Michael’s mother likely kept him going during the intensive hours he invested in each frame. He also possessed an immovable belief in his own ability, even though he’d only created a few projects prior to Awaken. That confidence extended to the Lee County Visitor Convention Bureau, which had commissioned him to do it.
His film career began just a little over three years ago. Intrigued by the mechanics of time- lapsing, Michael says the medium just clicked with him. “I became completely obsessed with it,” he remembers. So, on a whim, he moved to New York and started making The Manhattan Project— with no sponsors, nor prospect of payment.
“It was the most broke I’ve ever been in my life,” Michael admits, mentioning that he sold his bed to help pay for necessities.
“I kind of threw my hands up and hoped it’d work out,” he says. “I felt crazy being the guy who thought, I need to finish this project and everything will be OK, but at the same time, there was no doubt in my mind I’d really done something.”
It proved to be better than OK. Seemingly overnight, The Manhattan Project went viral, and national journalists and bloggers
descended on the man in his mid- twenties who just took the Internet by storm.
“In three days, I had no more money problems, and I went from a negative balance to ‘ I can eat food again!’ ” he says.
These days, Michael divides his time between his own projects and testing stateof- the- art, sponsored equipment that’s the envy of many cinematographers. But he’s surprisingly unaffected by it all. Most of it, at least. He has a newfound appreciation for regular meals.
“I’ve been blown away by [ Michael’s] work ethic,” says Max Soto, a friend of Michael’s and his former assistant. “When he focuses on a project … it turns into his whole life for the time being. It’s almost like he has blinders on.”
That, and Michael’s determination to teach himself, is what allowed him to skip a couple stops in the conventional trajectory, Soto says. Though Michael studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he never obtained an internship. Instead, he discovered time- lapse and film through his own trial- and- error. “You can spend your life learning your own empire, or helping someone build theirs,” Michael says. Michael began preparing for the sequel
to The Manhattan Project soon after returning to New York. But, when I reach him on the phone, his attention’s tied up elsewhere. He’s looking for new bath mats for his Central Park apartment. Sounds like a pleasant departure from sleeping on the floor just a few years ago, I say.
He simply responds: “I’d rather be dead broke and on the street doing what I love than just being fine and getting paid.” Spoken like a true artist.