Documentarian Approach

A large part of my professional career has happened in the vein of ultimately producing documentary films. That has been one of the few things that has remained steady in my mind as I have navigated my way through this industry. When I started Art House, the goal was to ultimately angle the company towards documentary film & so far it has worked out in small ways.

As an individual, it’s important for me to maintain some kind of an approach in order to achieve my ultimate goal. In some ways that approach is extremely abstract and time-based, and in other ways it is a lot more of a solidified idea in my mind. Keeping these thoughts in my mind has allowed me to continue on my path as I carve it out of the mountainside.

In the abstract, my ideas tend to revolve around ensuring that I am telling stories that matter. There is no criteria around “what matters” to me. And that is because stories shouldn’t just matter to me. The stories that I tell should matter to many people. Not just any specific group of people, rather, each story will have it’s own unique subset of humans that care about it.

In the world of solidified ideas, I have some rules that I try to focus on for each project:

• Take a position, but don’t force it on your audience

• Maintain journalistic integrity

• Film the good, the bad, & the ugly

• Ask questions even if it will get you in trouble

• Go beyond the traditional barriers

• Experience the story

• Go far & take your time

The biggest rule for me is to experience the story that I am telling. I believe that if I want to properly tell a story, I need to be able to experience what is being told. For example, if I am doing a story on a snowboarder I better know how to snowboard. If a small town in Iowa is losing it’s water supply, I better be there with the people of the town, living with it’s people & fully understanding the gravity of the situation. Who am I to tell a story without experiencing that story for myself. I believe the term is immersion.

I aim to fully immerse myself in the stories that I tell in the abstract and the physical. It’s so incredibly important to me and my process. I would like to believe that documentarians around the world have a similar approach, and I know that I would be wrong in that assumption. Not everyone has the same values that I do, and that’s not necessarily wrong. Other documentarians have their own ways of telling stories & if they’re successful enough then what’s the difference between how they approach their subjects and how I do?

There is none.

Art House Collective

A couple of years ago I was busy working as a freelance photographer & cinematographer. At some point during that process, I got picked up to be the Creative Director for a MusicTech startup called Artist Republik. It was during this time that I fell in love with what was essentially producing. I ran the company’s creative strategy & direction along with producing all of our productions and projects. When we sold the company, I had a choice to make: go back to freelancing or start my own company. In the name of progress, I decided to start my own company, Art House Operations.

Now, this had been an idea that I had in my mind for a couple of years. I had already purchased the domain names & got the LLCs in my name. I just hadn’t done anything with it since I had been so busy with other obligations. This time was different, I had nothing better to do & I wanted to continue a forward trajectory in my life and career. It was also at this same time that I moved from Los Angeles to Denver & I was in a new market with a ton of new opportunities.

One of the goals that I had for Art House was to focus specifically on a few key niches: art, music & outdoors. So as I began to inch towards the greater goal of this production company, I began making connections in these spaces. Luckily my portfolio in music had already been top-notch from my music festival days.

Oh, and by the way, all of this happened just over a year ago in 2021. I spent the majority of 2022 building the foundations for this company with a few clients of mine that I still call clients today. Jack Dawkins, the rapper. Andres Delgado (AKA VYPR), the muralist & abstract artist. Aspire Tours, the outdoor brand. I also have had a few contract clients that I’ve worked with along the way.

All of these clients have helped me and my company grow in ways that I never thought possible. Before, I thought that I had it down. I thought that I knew exactly what I was doing. Let me tell you… I was so wrong. Over the last full year of this company’s existence, I have made MANY mistakes. I have had to completely rethink my processes & business acumen. And I still have a lot to learn as I continue to build this company.

What is my point with all of this? Well, that’s the cliff notes history of my progress with what I am now calling Art House Collective. As I said, there is still tons of work for me to do with this company, and I have a lot of big goals for the future. Ultimately, I want Art House to strictly produce documentaries on a variety of topics.

Remember those clients that I mentioned before? At the moment I am helping them produce digital marketing content with a documentary twist. The long-term relationships with these clients are aimed at collecting content for each of them over time to produce a longer-form documentary in the future as their own stories develop.

Jack Dawkins is just getting into his career as a musical artist and I have been blessed to have been there from the early beginnings. I have been documenting his life and career for the last year now and we have big plans going into 2023. We are currently producing mini-documentaries based around his life month-month. These will all eventually fold into the larger documentary that we will be producing as he grows and gains a larger fanbase.

VYPR’s situation is very similar. I have been hanging out with Andres for less than a year, and yet we have put on an art show together and I have produced a short documentary about him during that period. We also traveled to Qatar together in December of 2022 for the World Cup and I was able to get a ton of footage there as well. This kid is going to be a hugely influential artist & I have been able to follow his story from the early beginnings as well.

Aspire Tours is doing some big things here in the state of Colorado. They are opening up a piece of land in Salida to help promote tourism in the Colorado mountains and beyond. I have been following their story for about as long as I have with Jack Dawkins. As their story develops I hope to help them grow their influence through the documentary-style content that we are producing for them.

All of these projects are just a small stepping stone towards producing more documentary-style content that I hope to get into the hands of some of the bigger streaming services in the future. We are building something really big and if you’re reading this, you are now part of our journey. I can’t wait to continue sharing more about what’s happening in my life & with Art House Collective as time goes on.

An Introduction

Hi there! My name is Christian Hundley and I am a photographer, a cinematographer, and a nomad. I have been in this field for a large majority of my life (12 years and some change) and I don’t see myself getting out of it any time soon. Over the last few years, I have begun to wonder about what comes next in my life & career. But first, a little bit of context:

I started this journey as a child. For as long as I can remember, I have always loved telling stories. And I’ve tried telling stories in a large variety of ways. I made a limited-run comic book series out of Walmart notebooks, recorded my screen while I played Club Penguin & cut together little stories with voiceovers, I even “animated” using MS Paint at one point! Then when I hit my middle school years I took a liking to the skateboard. All the cool kids did it and I wanted to be one of the cool kids (obviously). I did that for a few years and of course, I had to tell some kind of story. I got a little camcorder for Christmas & I immediately began using it to record… you guessed it, skate videos. This was my first real experience using a camera to tell a REAL story. As I write this I am realizing that this was the first time that I was able to dive into the world of documentary filmmaking… I’ll get to that in a second.

Getting back on track… when it was time for me to go to high school, I was given a sheet of paper that showed me all of the cool classes that I would be able to take as a freshman. One of them stood out to me; Student Filmmaking. Of course, I had to take the class… it was going to teach me all that I wanted to know about making the BEST skate videos out there. I signed up for the class & within the first week of my Freshman year, I joined the high school’s media club and began a journey that would lead me to where I am today.

That was a little over 12 years ago now & the kid that wanted to make skate videos has become a full-time photographer, cinematographer, & creative director. Oh, and he also owns a production company that he hopes to one day be worthy of an Oscar or two.

Anyways, what does any of this have to do with the first thing I said? Well, when I was that young kid I had set some pretty big goals for myself. They were as follows:

• Go to Film School

• Live in Los Angeles

• Work in Film/Television

• Use a Camera Full-Time

• Travel the World (With a Camera)

Simple enough, but as a kid with my background it seemed like an impossible feat. And guess what? I accomplished every single one of those goals. Within 12 years & all of those being a young adult with a lot of barriers between myself and the endgame. So, that brings me to my point.

The day that I accomplished those goals I fell into a bit of a vortex of confusion. I had accomplished all of the goals that I had set for myself so many years ago and I didn’t stop to think, “What’s next?” And I’ve sat on that question for the last year and a half of my life.

I live in Denver, Colorado now. I run Art House Creative, a small documentary-focused production company with clients in the music, art, & outdoors space. I also take freelance work as a photographer and cinematographer for a variety of projects. I have helped start and sell two startups as a creative director. I feel like I’m on top of the world most days. I have become the definition of success that I imagined for myself. And yet… something was missing.

So I went on a little soul-searching adventure across the world. I backpacked the United Kingdom & then journeyed out to Qatar, in the middle east, to watch the World Cup with a close friend of mine. I still haven’t processed that journey yet. I just got home and settled this first week in January 2023. As I’ve begun to unpack all that happened I am reflecting on the thoughts and notes that I compiled on my trip and one of the big ideas that came out was… this. This blog that I am titling, is “Documenting Hundley.”

The plan is to make it more than just a blog. I want this to be a place where I can share my story & the stories of my travels & people that I meet along the way. It’s quite literally a handwritten account, documenting my journey as I document others. Pretty cool, right? I don’t know if this will grow into anything. All I know is that for me, it is a way for me to express my thoughts, my emotions, and my experiences in a raw and unfiltered way.

If you found this right after I completed it or years down the road, just know that I am glad you are here.

Thanks for reading.