Michael Curtis had been a successful and award-winning post production editor before launching into full film productions for a broad range of clients through his company EditLab. Several years ago he formed a film collaborative, Filmstigator, to draw together fellow creatives and produce independent films.

“After years of working as a television editor and producer,” Curtis explains, “I yearned to branch out and start creating the kinds of personal films I’d never had a chance to make before—the kinds of films that had originally drawn me to the industry. I wondered if there were others out there like me, and I began actively looking for them.”

While attending the Orlando Film Festival in October of last year, I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Michael Curtis. He was there for the showing of his first film short, "Gift." Like many independent filmmakers, he has spent many years doing commercial film projects for clients but finally wanted to create something entirely his own. In this article I will cover Curtis’ entry into the commercial film production world and some of the projects he has worked on. In a second article, I will discuss how Curtis brought all that experience to his first independent film project and the creative process to make "Gift" a reality.