Today we’d like to introduce you to Agron Karameti.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Agron. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My whole career is me basically going to one door, opening it, and heading to another.
I come from an immigrant family that worked every day. My parents owned restaurants and didn’t do anything else. I learned from a young age that if you want something, you better work hard and put the time in. I was born and raised in a town that touches Philadelphia, and my family always told me you better do something with your life, you have no excuse not to. We came from nothing to give you a better chance at life. (No pressure, right?)
My parents loved taking photos and filming my sisters and me in the backyard, playing around. Anytime there was a moment, my parents wanted to film it. I really think if my parents grew up in different circumstances, they would be well-known artists.
I loved having the camera around. My parents worked from open to close six days a week and my sisters and I would hang around the restaurant, helping if we could, and living life. I would then steal my parent’s film camera and making mini-documentaries around the store. My parents really liked it so they kept getting me newer cameras. I kept making mini films with my family and I was really enjoying it.
When you enter high school, it’s a huge time in your life. Making new friends, you grow into an adult, and you kinda have to figure out what you’re going to do with your life. The pressures of your peers, getting ready for college and entering the real world. My freshman year I found out that our school had a film program. All the popular kids in school were apart of the film program and I wanted to put myself out there. Once I started the program, my life started changing.
I learned quickly how to film events around the school district, edit them at a higher level, and we had to put them out there for the community channel. I also took advantage of the tools around me and I was editing the movies I made with my parents and friends, and I was producing more.
I had the same teacher throughout the film program, and I think he’s the greatest teacher anyone could have. He told me you could go to college to study film and get a job in it. I was like, you can work in movies? And get paid? And do this full-time? And not have to work in the food business? He looked at me and said yes, and you can probably do a lot more. He held me accountable throughout high school and pushed me to produce more films for the school and district. My school has a scholarship awarded to the hardest working film student to help them out in college. I won that award.
From there, I attended The University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, and studied film. My freshman year, I took an acting for non-majors. I fell in love with it. I was a full-time student, working full-time with my parents, and also taking acting classes outside of college. I made three short films my first year of college, they were awful, but they made me better. Throughout college, I made eight different short films, which some appeared in local film festivals in the Philadelphia and Bucks County Areas.
After college, I took a break from making films, and I pursued acting. I attended Stella Alder Acting Studio in New York City and studied there for two years. Through the work I’ve done and put the time in, I appeared in TV shows such as Limitless, directed by Marc Webb and produced by Bradley Cooper, and Red Oaks, which is on Amazon. I then did some local theater and Shakespeare. I was so happy that I was apart of an august group of talent and I learned so much from them. I was working hard and I wanted to keep growing.
I wrote and published a play, which is available on Amazon, A Game Called Love. I fell in love with writing, and I went back to making more films. In a two year spanned, I wrote and produced 10 different films ranging from five minutes to an hour and ten minutes. Some of those films are available on Amazon and Vimeo. Then some of those films were featured in Film Festivals such as The Grove Film Festival and The Kansas City Film Festival.
I was still working full-time with my parents, but I had a feeling that I needed to move and learn more. Work with people I haven’t before, and grow as an artist. I packed up my bags and drove my car 13 hours to Chicago. All the artist I love, admire, and inspired me, learned a lot of their craft in Chicago. From their legendary Second City studying to the amazing theater scene Chicago has, I wanted to leave my mark as well.
I wanted to make a TV series when I first got to Chicago. I reached out to different Facebook pages and groups to make this show happen. I wrote six episodes of season one of the TV show, Hapless. I produced and directed the series.
Funding is always an issue with independent filmmakers, it holds people back from their dreams, and it can make a dream seem daunting. One thing I learned from my parents is that there are no excuses in life. They always worked with what they had and tried their damn hardest. I used whatever money I had, credit cards are wonderful and terrifying and worked with people that wanted to be there. The series is available on Vimeo and Amazon and I’m currently reaching out to film companies to produce season two of the show.
This current summer I will be producing and directing two feature films that will be filmed here in Chicago and publishing two more plays that I wrote. Also putting together my first play on a stage here in Chicago.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think there were more potholes along the way, just like the roads in Chicago.
Right off the bat, it was tough. I applied to ten different film schools, nine rejected me. It wasn’t that my family didn’t believe in me, it was more along the lines of me getting a great job and living a great life. Most of my family wanted me to be a lawyer and the day I told them I was going to film school, they laughed the whole night.
I looked at college as well, one school believes in me, let’s run with it. Looking back at college, I don’t know how I made it out. I was taking classes in the mornings from 7 am to 3 pm and then working from 4 pm to midnight, then studying and then taking acting classes, and figuring out when to sleep where.
My first ever audition, I got and I remember saying, this is easy! Didn’t book another movie for three years. Failed audition after another. So, I applied to acting school and I got rejected. I called thevery dayday for one week telling them why I wanted to go there and how hard I would work, they finally put me in. I think they just felt bad.
There was a point where after countless rejects, you have to look into a mirror and ask is this even worth it? Then my friends and my parents told me to make your own damn films, and I did. I really wanted to work as a director, but not just goofing off with your friends in your backyard, really direct. Design the sets, lighting properly, and making good art. My first two short films really got the ball going for me. I played small roles in those films and directed them. They turned out great, we got into festivals and people wanted to see more. So I wanted to push myself.
I spent two months writing a TV pilot. Draft after draft, sending it out to people I respected and getting their feedback, and then re-writing. I probably wrote ten different drafts of this pilot. I wanted to do it better than the last two short films. I worked so hard and saved a lot of my money and then asked for some from family and friends and got together ten thousand dollars. I hired real actors, real crew, and got together a real project. It failed after the first day of filming and I lost ten thousand dollars. God, I was depressed.
I took four months off, worked really hard, and tried to pay back all the money I borrowed. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I really learned what it means to be a producer and a director. I needed to share the vision and give people the room to create their work. I was proud of myself for failing. I came back and wrote another pilot called Moving Along. All pun intended for my life.
I got my friends together and we talked about the characters and the vision and where we see this going. I really learned how to communicate and get a plan done. Filming the project, everyone had so much fun, they were laughing, working hard, and really enjoying being on set. One more than one occasion after I said cut, the actors looked at me and said, I had no idea we were filming, I got carried away in the moment.
It took me almost three years to pay back the money I lost but I grew. I took the same lessons and applied it to other projects and one thing I’m proud about within my work is that my actors have the total freedom to go where they think is best and they fully understand the story we’re trying to tell.
Agron Karameti – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
When I work on other people’s films, I work as a producer. I find whatever the director wants and always stick to the schedule. I know film making is stressful, organized chaos. What sets me apart is the fact that I work all around the clock to get visions done, nothing is impossible for me to film, and I will push everyone around me to be better because that’s the most important to me. Being better than you were yesterday.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
As a writer, my proudest moments are when people tell me they can relate to what the character is feeling and this is a conversation I had before.
As a director, my proudest moments are when I see the actors really diving into the role and having total freedom.
As an actor, the proudest moment is when a film I was in premiered at a film festival and the theater had over 40 people there to watch it. It made it worth it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.agronkarameti.com
- Email: contact@agronkarameti.com
- Instagram: @akarameti
- Facebook: @agronkarameti
- Other: vimeo.com/akarameti
Image Credit:
Agron Karameti
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