Architect By Day & Artist By Night … from Melissa Noel on Vimeo.
While completing a degree in Architecture in Washington D.C., Dwayne Smith made a decision.
He decided that he would not choose between pursuing a career in architecture and his goal of making it in the music industry as an R& B singer. So he didn’t.
Now almost two years since Smith got his degree, he is an Architectural Draftsman at KOR architects, a leading New York City firm. He also making waves as unsigned hype performing self-written R&B songs all over NYC and Washington D.C.
Each day this 24-year-old Bronx native goes from making blue prints to writing music notes. He often goes straight from the firm to the stage.
Smith is in the process of trying to get signed to a record label. He is also lead designer of gallery for a new arts institution in Manhattan. This is something Smith says is usually reserved for older, more experienced architects.
“I will not lose, failure is not an option” is something Smith says to himself everyday.
He may not lose, but many around him think that the day will come when he will have to choose between one or the other because each is so demanding.
Smith’s family equally supports both of his ambitions. His two brothers help promote and produce his music and he has made his mother the C.E.O of his company Crow Productions. The company will feature music as well as a clothing line Smith recently started called Vello Apparel.
He was heavily influenced by the strict upbringing and lover’s rock reggae music in his Jamaican household.
Smith just made his first music video for his most successful single thus far, “Illustrious” and will complete the art gallery at the start of 2012.
“At times I do feel like I have to choose between architecture and music , but I try to keep the drive for both.”
Awesome subject. Love his story. Also love how you brought in his music video. I think it would be nice to tighten the whole thing up to about 2:00 minutes. It’d also be nice to just focus on his dichotomy as a man in two different worlds, what that means to him, why he did it. Could probably cut a lot of the stuff on how he thinks about music all the time, etc. Over all, excellent stuff. You always have such killer ideas.
Quick tech thing: the audio bounces left to right quite a bit. I’d say just set all the pans to the middle and export as mono. Cool. You got this.
Colin thank you so much for your feedback. I will do that. I was trying so hard to figure out what to cut and that makes a lot of sense. The same goes for the audio and tightening up the peice overall.
I really enjoyed watching the video- the music at the beginning before we see the subject really drew me in and held my attention. My two favorite parts were the soundbite of Smith singing in Times Square, and the scene towards the end with him on the beach.
Wonderful audio levels. I never felt that the music in the background overpowered the sound of Smith’s voice, so that was very good, and it complemented the rhythm of his voice.
I thought the timing was perfect when we see him walking towards the water, and he says how he feels at times he has to choose between architecture and music. At that moment I felt the audience really gets to know the character.
On that note, I think having that scene where he talks about the relationship between his music and architecure a bit earlier in the video would make it stronger. To me that seems like the heart of your story, since that is also the focus of the written part.
Also, this could be just me, but there were a couple of points where the video seemed a bit jumpy, such as where he says that Dwayne Smith is his personal being, and then he starts talking about art- perhaps you can put in a title card for narration purposes.
After watching the video I felt as if I got a really good understanding of Smith as a person. Again, wonderful subject!