Winter of 1999, my mom bought me my first video camera, a Sony digital Hi-8. I still have it, along with at least 50 MiniDV tapes filled with footage from street interviews, failed and 'successful' sketches, music video shoots, and I dread to discover what else.  

I hadn't planned to spend the next twenty-five years behind a camera, and it should be clear from this photo that I hadn't planned where I would sleep that night I traveled back to Omaha to film our first project, 'Love Struck Out.' But while setting up for our first day of principal photography, I turned the camera on myself and snapped this image. I now find myself staring out from the other side, with a couple decades worth of filming knowledge, along with some thousand or so commercials, hundreds of interviews, hours of stand-up comedy material, a handful of documentaries, music videos, short films, and more failures and successes than I care to remember. That's the camera's job.  

So why dig out the archives after all this time? When you are new to doing something, you have yet to discover its limitations. I believe that a fresh perspective grants you a unique approach to your craft, even if it means more time spent learning from mistakes an apprenticeship in a larger operation steers you clear of. Complacency is the death of risk, and, therefore, artistic endevor. I won't be winning awards for originality while still conforming to established molds, but I will challenge myself to express my observation of reality, resulting in a product that, although raw and flawed, is uniquely my own. Bastard & Hoodlum Productions is a commitment to being estranged from established norms of a homogenized audio/visual landscape, and a homage to its namesake, and my mother, who so aptly coined it.

Andrew Torkelson
03/02/25
Bastard & Hoodlum Productions