About

Why "Shiny Object Films?"

Because everybody loves the shiny object—the big idea, the clever concept, the thing that sounds amazing when somebody pitches it. I love that part too. But an idea is only as good as what actually ends up on the screen.

That’s really what Shiny Object Films is about: finding the interesting idea, then doing the less glamorous work of making it actually work. Story, shooting, editing, graphics, sound, pacing, problem-solving, revisions, more revisions, and occasionally staring at a timeline wondering how this seemed so simple three days ago.

I’m Tom Szymanski, and I’ve been making videos for about 25 years. Along the way, I’ve worked in TV news, marketing and promotions, cable television, healthcare, independent film, and freelance production and editing.

Most of my work lives somewhere between storytelling, branding, documentary, promotion, and figuring out how to make a pile of footage actually mean something. I’ve written, shot, produced, edited, animated, made graphics, developed campaigns, built weird little ideas from scratch, and occasionally rescued projects from situations that probably should not have worked.

A lot of the work I’m proudest of has come from collaboration. Over the years I’ve had the chance to make things with Stuart Tefft, Jim Allen, Adam Hevey, Andy Rienen, Chris Payne, and a long list of other filmmakers, artists, writers, performers, producers, and wonderfully strange creative people. Some projects were polished professional productions. Others were a few friends, a camera, a ridiculous idea, and a determination to see what happened.

There’s also tomthescreenwriter.com, which is where the writing side of my brain tends to wander off to, and pmf5.com, connected to the Primate Memory Factory 5-Minute Film Competition we started what feels like a million years ago. Both are evidence that I’ve never been especially good at sticking to just one kind of creative work.

And where are the films?

They’re here too. Some are documentaries, some are shorts, some are experiments, some are very old and very weird, and at least one involves a monkey thinking about time in the desert. I’ve also been working on "Re-Aligned," a feature documentary that has taken the scenic route toward completion.

So this is probably the point where an About page is supposed to wrap everything up with a carefully polished statement about creativity and storytelling.

Instead, I’ll bring it back to the shiny object.

Ideas are everywhere. Good ones are harder to find. But the real trick is taking one of them, chasing it down, solving all the problems that show up along the way, and turning it into something worth watching.

That’s the part I like.