CarolynSwartzCreative

My Story  (or one of them)

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Growing up in Marblehead, Massachusetts, I dreamed of having straight blonde hair, blue eyes and a family that knew how to ski.  I played piano well, and thought I might become a professional musician until the age of twelve, when my  piano teacher brought me to a Boston "expert", who informed her that my  hands were "too small."  A few years later,  I learned about a college endowment for girls from Marblehead majoring in art at a four-year college.  

That clinched it. Never mind that my sister and I are among the very few women who are color blind.  I would become a visual artist, most likely a painter.  But after graduating from Connecticut College (as an art major, of course), life took a different turn - back to music and up to Maine (for a couple of years) as singer/pianist/songwriter in a series of  bands that performed around New England.  

Back in Boston, I studied jazz with the renowned teacher Charlie Banacos.   And while I was playing "out" in clubs with other jazzers, I began to to think about pursuing  a "real" career.  Aha. An art teacher, maybe. After one session of an art education class at Mass College of Art, I switched to one in  filmmaking and was immediately hooked. It suddenly became clear my interest in the arts - drawing, painting, songwriting, performing - revolved around storytelling.  At the time, MIT had a small but strong documentary filmmaking program (later absorbed into the Media Lab) headed up by seminal filmmaker Ricky Leacock.  I got in, and my first half-hour documentary was screened on invitation in  the Forum of the Berlin Film Festival.

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This led to a move from Cambridge to Berlin - where I worked for a year as Kamerafrau  on a German feature feature,  and then  to New York City, where I edited for a director who told me (with a Polish accent and no article),  "You are VRITER."

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Okay, I thought.  Maybe I am.  Through friends and colleagues, I began working with agencies that served Fortune 200 corporations, writing  and directing not 30- or 60-second  commercials -  but thoughtful or funny or  storytelling longer-form films.  Very soon I was working in other capacities - as creative director, speechwriter, content strategist, web copywriter -  helping clients deliver compelling, authentically real-deal stories live, on line, in print, and across all media (while also  telling a few of my own.)

It all  starts with a great story.  Let's work together to tell yours.