Our mission is to inspire a more mature and technically informed perspective through documentary on the realities of the Transgender lifestyle and the Trans person's metamorphosis. We hope that we can achieve this by being specific to our subject's, AJ Young's, personal trials and triumphs whilst maintaining an issue based and emotional relation to the Trans community as a whole. Education on the Trans identity is a keypoint in our agenda as we feel it is still so widely misunderstood. A Man Who Takes The Place Of is a different web series because it plainly states the actualities of AJ's daily life and lifestyle choices in relation to his Trans identity through a cinema verite style lens. Although this is not a documentary shouting at the top of it's lungs for acceptance or legislative action, it genuinely portrays a human being going through a process to change their life without assigning them the disconnection of “otherness.” I believe this to be a step in a new direction of socially aware and conscious cinema.
AJ is also a key role in the structuring of the series. His schedule, daily routines, hobbies and life decisions dictate what will be filmed and edited into each episode. In this way, this documentary series is very much a character piece; AJ has commented on how he feels we grant him the ability to visualize his own story. This is most important to us as it represents our ability to reflexively support each other through documentation and the exhibition of one's life. As a company Mirrorwall Films supports the representation of Trans and other LGBTQ members alike in film and media in order to fortify awareness and promote visibility. We hope that our series touches you and helps you learn something about Trans.
-Samuel Angus Campbell, Dir.
D I R E C T O R ' S S T A T E M E N T
T H E F I L M M A K E R S
Director: Samuel Angus Campbell
Samuel Angus Campbell is a filmmaker from Brooklyn, New York. His strengths are directing photography, camera and steadicam operating. Much of his personal work is often times related to issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and other social or political topics. Personally, Campbell believes that cinema, whether commercial or independent, influences a viewer's take on the world just as frequently if not more than real life, and that film should be a medium for progressive change. Campbell is inspired stylistically by filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alfred Hitchcock, Niels Arden Oplev, James Marsh, Davis Guggenheim, Michael Gondry and others.
Director: Taylor A. Shuster
Taylor Shuster is a young aspiring filmmaker, actress and editor from Bethlehem, PA. She grew up with a passion for art, but it took many years to realize that film was truly where her passions belonged. Joining the Mirrorwall team soon after it’s beginnings, she quickly became one of the most active artists in the group and earned the role of Assistant Director of Operations to the company. Since then she has worked on a number of shorts. Taylor finds calling in numerous departments of film and media. Taylor has filled the roles of assistant director, art director, actress and editor through four senior thesis projects at Temple University. Taylor has also recently taken an interest in screenwriting and plans to direct her own film in the near future.