I Shall Take That Which Is Mine grew out of a collage of influences. Most directly was the Green Light Project which was hot in Atlanta from 2006 to 2009 as a hip-hop street team and basement recording studio. It was the bomb! We threw house parties, open mic's, put out street discs and generally had a great time soaking up the heat that the rap scene was generating here. The Green Light never really went away, and most of the people on ISTTWIM are from that project. Basically we took our do-it-yourself approach and re-tooled it with the new hi-def dslr cameras.

The main lessons that I learned from the Green Light is that people will be willing to get on a project without pay if the get treated fairly, respectfully and are given some sort of reward, like a copy on dvd or prints of the photos. But that willingness is limited. So ISTTWIM was built around a production approach where we could do a complete "thing" in one day. Before doing video I was a production manager for 15 years doing print, web and graphic design, so setting a workflow that, well... works - for me trumps artistic inspiration. I saw tons of online trailers for similar *movies* that you just knew were never going to get done, and having that hard core advertising production background, for me, getting something done is what it's all about.

This "good enough" approach causes a lot of friction with my long-time number two, Mark Wilson. As a dropout of several prestigious art schools, he always wants to take something to that next level while I am looking at the clock ticking to 4:59 and saying that it's done as is. Ah, kids today! But he keeps me thinking about better techniques and I'm lucky to have him on board.

Long story story (too late) I Shall Take That Which Is Mine was built to get done with the resources I have right here, right now. It's also a replicable format so people in a similar situation can do the same. You see a lot of projects that cover the same conceptual territory but you see very few with the practical production methods like I Shall Take That Which Is Mine. Hopefully you will be seeing much more soon to come.