Deus ex Machina

STYLE: SHORT FILM
CREATOR: SETH BROWN
SUBJECT: JACK CHURCHILL
LOCATION: CAMDEN, ME

Deus Ex Machina is the story of Jack Churchill, an unusual man who builds an incredibly beautiful, but dangerous machine. 

Documentary storytelling is my way of learning why people do what they love. I seek to understand their struggle to achieve, the process of overcoming mistakes, and accepting the nauseating realization that you have to scrap it all and start over. 

When you are in the throws of creativity, it’s nearly impossible to step back and disassociate from the detailed work - watching Jack was my first opportunity to see how someone did this successfully. 

I first met Jack when I was in high school and he was volunteering to help teach an advanced film class. He had a temper, which almost shutdown my final film project because I skipped scouting a location. It will remain the first major lesson I learned about filmmaking: if you don't prep, you're not making a film. 

Eventually, I realized that he had a story to tell—a story about his creative vision that would resonate with everyone who’d ever tried to bring an original idea to life.  Honestly, he was just the first in a trail of breadcrumbs that would lead to a deluge of process stories of people doing things they loved, but he (as well as the class teacher Chris Walker-Spencer) will remain the first set of 'official' mentors to push me into the world of filmmaking. 

Seth Brown
Director, Deus ex Machina