I was born in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts in 1983. Growing up, I was surrounded by the beauty and wonder of nature. I was creative from an early age: drawing and painting the world I saw around me and the worlds I saw in my imagination. Even at a young age, I was a people person. I loved talking with people but, more importantly, listening as well. I learned more about the world around me by listening carefully to those around me than I ever learned in any other way. I did well in elementary and middle school but never really enjoyed school all that much until I went to high school at the Williston-Northampton School. There, I was challenged and grew in many ways. My creativity was nurtured and allowed to grow and I fell in love with art of all types, taking almost every art class the school offered. Painting and photography were two of my favorites and I did an independent study in combined photography and graphic design. After graduating high school in the spring of 2001, I decided against attending college, and instead spent close to year sailing from Maine to the Bahamas and back. During that time I taught myself the guitar and began a love affair with music that continues to this day.
Once I returned to land, I attended the Connecticut School of Broadcasting looking to pursue a career in radio. After finishing school, and finding the radio market had changed drastically in the previous few years, making employment tough, I worked in construction and then at a small electronics repair company. After looking for better employment opportunities I found a job at Tunstall Corporation, a company that manufactured and sold heating equipment. While at Tunstall, I worked in everything from shipping and receiving to sales, government contacting, production and quality control. After seven years with Tunstall Corporation my heart was no longer in my job. I longed to have a job that allowed me to be creative and use my strengths of communication. I thought long and hard about what I enjoyed and what my strengths were. I decided that video production would allow me to tie together my creativity, communication skills, and love of technology.
I enrolled at Holyoke Community College in the summer of 2012, in the electronic media department. I was hungry to learn and excelled in my classes. I immediately began to see the power of video as a means to communicate many varied types of information, from the mundane to the sublime, informational to emotional, and everything in between. It was while helping a fellow musician create a music video to help him connect and communicate with his audience, that the plan for SamKat Studios started to take shape. The power of video as a form of communication began to become entwined with the belief that for any business or artist to be successful they must communicate with their customers or audience effectively. In the summer of 2013 I interned at Baystate Hospital in the video department. I worked many different videos including informational employee videos and training videos. When I finished my internship I was asked to continue working with Baystate as a freelance videographer. My first freelance job was an instructional music video about preventing delirium in the ICU, which won an award.
During my final year at Holyoke Community College, I began looking at the way people are communicating in this age of social media. More than half the population uses the Internet to make purchases, get their news, and find out about new products and ideas. At the same time, I was surprised by the number of businesses that have limited or no web presence at all. As the way that humans communicate has changed from spoken word to text, television and now the Internet, the way of presenting that information has changed. Even the way of presenting information on the Internet has changed from text to photos and now video.
My knowledge of communication through video will help your business or band communicate with your audience clearly and powerfully. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million. Let SamKat Studios help you speak volumes.
~ Forrest Landry
IN LOVING MEMORY
WEBMASTER