Shaunte used to come to my latte art competitions not in search of coffee, but for cultural movements happening within our community.
So there she was with her awesome camera, curiosity, and kindness. I don't believe she got footage of the first one she came to and I don't think I even met her at that time, but she kept coming. Eventually, Shaunte and I got in touch and we planned to have her create a video of the next throwdown I organized.
Once she directed me to view the video on her vimeo page and I got to see her other work; I realized that she was not only curious about cultural movements in our community, but she had a talent for corralling it into a video. Needless to say, we continued to stay in touch and a few more throwdown videos came out of it. Soon enough Shaunte was looking for something deeper and straight up asked me about creating some sort of documentaries about coffee and the people that push it to new levels.
My mind started to spin with the opportunities we had with this new creative outlet. However, It feels as though, for some reason, it took us a while to get serious about it due to other priorities and conflicting schedules. In the meantime I was valuing travel and experience more and more. The more I had excursions to other cities for coffee, the more I met incredible people, and encountered amazing experiences. I started to think that I really had to have this captured and shared with others.
I'm always working on a few projects at once and over extending myself. One day, I had to stop myself, make the realization, and decide what it is that I want to focus on. After giving it a lot of thought and debate I concluded that I wanted a show, a series, a documentary about exploring coffee all over the world. I got back with Shaunte and told her that I wanted to start focusing on this project. We started to build more content at home and created our own youtube channel. After I had returned from Costa Rica, I started to think about my next big trip and new that Shaunte and Coffee Scene had to be the purpose behind it.
In order to build content and get people to realize our concept we planned to drive across the country to document the coffee culture in each city we pass. It is going to be a gigantic cry out for people to see our vision and the changing industry and cultures of the country. For the month of June, 2015 we will be on an adventure to explore what the food/beverage movements in each city have to offer. Currently we are in search for organizations that would be interested in partnering with our efforts and people and places that would like us to document their impact on the coffee scene. Until then, stay tuned!
