Andy Mingo is a Portland-based director/producer. He gained recognition as several of his films were included at national and international film festivals and screenings. His most recent film, ‘Romance’ was adapted from a story by ‘Fight Club’ author, Chuck Palahniuk. ‘Romance’ made its world premiere at the 2012 Raindance Film Festival and went on to screen at Cinequest, the Seattle True Independent Film Festival, and the 2013 Portland Film Festival. In 2012 Andy was invited to the Paris-Sorbonne University where he lectured on the process of adapting Chuck Palahniuk’s fiction to the screen.
Andy is also the director of the Digital Media Program at Clackamas Community College in Oregon, where he teaches digital filmmaking. For his efforts in workforce training Andy was awarded the 2015 Oregon Governor’s Award for Innovation in Education by Governor John Kitzhaber.
Why did you become a director? Instructor?
My move into directing film was primarily due to my failure as a Hollywood screenwriter. While I was still living in San Diego I was in regular contact with an LA Producer, Tony Bill. Tony has a long career in film; he won an Oscar for producing ‘The Sting’ in 1973 and possibly more importantly he played the film producer in ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’ who ultimately green lights Pee-wee’s biopic motion picture. Tony was very supportive of the scripts I delivered to him, but unlike his film producer persona in Pee-wee’s film, he passed on all three of my scripts, leaving me with the quandary of what I should do with my story orphans. So in the end I decided to go directly to the source and produce stories into my own films. My move into teaching filmmaking was informed by the void of any available film production instruction at all the colleges and universities I had previously attended. I really wish I had earlier opportunities to learn the art of filmmaking in my twenties; unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Ultimately I found myself teaching at a college that had some film theory classes, but didn’t have any offerings in film production. We created an initial production class and have been expanding our curriculum ever since, which now includes Motion Capture and Red Epic and Arri Amira camera operation.
Why Oregon?
Having grown up in the arid climate of Reno Nevada, I was immediately hooked on Oregon the first time I visited for my sister’s college graduation from Lewis and Clark. Everything was alive and green. That much life sparked my imagination. Later I moved to Eugene for a bit prior to graduate school, hoping to get into Ken Kesey’s writing workshop at the University of Oregon. I ended up doing graduate school in San Diego, where I met my wife, the award-winning Oregon writer, Lidia Yuknavitch. We grew tired of the lack of seasons in Southern California and decided to raise our son in a remote house that skirted the Bull Run Wilderness out beyond Corbett, Oregon. It was a magical place, straight out of the novel, ‘Sometimes a Great Notion.’
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