Director

M. J. Walker

Producer, Writer, Director, & Cinematographer

Born in 1996, M. J. Walker was artistic at a young age and, by age 10, had curated a portfolio of detailed hand drawings, an intense obsession with music, and acquired basic computer photo and video editing skills. By his early teens Walker had an interest in video game mapping and scripting, which led to the creation of his own custom map in a video game. Walker had also become fluent in mainstream digital photo and video editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Premiere Pro and had become familiar with popular 3D rendering software such as Cinema 4D and Blender. In his late teens and, with the advancement of cell phone cameras, Walker practiced landscape photography with a focus on composition. As a young adult, Walker moved to Los Angeles for two years to learn and practice filmmaking where he directed music videos for his two friends and aspiring rappers. Walker's artistic journey led him back to his native state of New Jersey to produce his first feature film. M. J. Walker believes filmmaking is more than just a moving image, it is every art form in one.

Director's Statement

Story

"Inspired by true events, Retrograde Victory portrays a different side of the Vietnam War. Not the usual side that follows a platoon of soldiers, but a side which follows one of the several hundred thousands of young men whose spouses, friends, or loved ones were killed soon after they were drafted to the Vietnam War. More importantly, I hope to portray the worthlessness of currency. In my opinion, money exists to keep the population distracted from the inevitability that is death. Money makes many happy, yet others sad. No matter one's position in this world, the places they travel, the things they buy, nothing creates more joy than the people they care about, though many are too selfish to realize this until those people are dead. The goal of my first film is not to show another side of the Vietnam War, or even just another tale of comedy and tragedy, but to show the worth of people."

Cinematography

"As far as cinematography, I want Retograde Victory to look raw and gritty. I want it to have the feel of a movie shot between 1967 and 1969 and I think I've captured that so far. Nearly all major films of that era (1960s) were shot on slow speed 35mm tungsten balanced Eastman Kodak film which required a special '85 filter' when used in daylight unlike today's advancements in which we have the option of both tungsten film for night scenes or daylight film for day scenes. Additionally, the Eastman Kodak film stocks of the 1960s were notoriously grainy, the opposite of Kodak's 35mm film stocks of today which are so fine-graned they resemble today's digital cinema cameras. However, with the advancement of motion picture film,  Kodak's latest 16mm film stocks now resemble mid-century 35mm color films but with more dynamic range and lifelike colors. Regarding Retrograde Victory, not only am I shooting the entire film on only tungsten balanced 16mm Kodak film, but I am also using lighting techniques of the 1960s which was dominantly tungsten lamps and colored gels as opposed to the modern standard of color-changing LEDs and HMI lamps. Moreover, No special effects are performed on this film. Every thing in every frame is shot on set, even footage playing on a tube TV; no green screens in this film."