This Week We Feature Young Professional Philip Richards Jr. He is a cinematographer, something he has a deep passion for. Photo: Provided

Since getting in the field of cinematography Mr Philip Richards Jr. has recognized the vast talents that locals have in the performing arts. Photo: Provided

“Why I am doing this? it’s to help the locals to get where they need to get and if this is going to do it, then so be it. This is not something that I like doing, I don’t like to do this but I did this so that I can help the artists and everybody can get where they need to get so that people can be more receptive to them,” Mr Philip Richards Jr. Photo: Provided

Mr Philip Richards Jr. at work. Photo: Provided

He has committed his time to doing his best to giving artists the best quality production for their music. Photo: Provided

“Business owners please, property owners… allow me to shoot on your premises... allow me to use it. We are met with a lot of road blocks and a lot of NOs .. it’s much more than the polish. It’s the location and the actors and everything that make our productions look like they are foreign…” said Mr Philip Richards Jr. Photo: Provided

Philip Richards Jr. doing his thing. Photo: Provided

Philip Richards Jr. doing his thing. Photo: Provided

He is no member of any non-governmental organization, movement or the like but he is someone who like many others in his shoes are bleeding on the inside as they continue to be hurt and to an extent stifled being a local and not getting the respect and push to advance in the arts.

Mr Richards is a Young Professional with a great difference from many that we have come across over the years that we have been doing this feature. He is engaged in a career that is seldom found in the Virgin Islands (VI) and while there has been much to what he does he like being the ‘behind the scenes’ kind of guy.

He is so reserved that it was only recently that he has moved to social media and can be found on Facebook as ‘V-Islander media’ a page that is worth your taking a bit of time to ‘like’.

He is a cinematographer, something he has a deep passion for. He has self-educated himself in the career with the aid of a few necessary courses here and there online and otherwise as he feels that it requires a deep passion for the craft if one is to do it to the extent that he does.

He loves what he does to the extent that one can call him a perfectionist; this he admits is something that can bite him in sensitive places at times. “A very reserved, a very caring, very opinionated, I strive for excellence, I am a perfectionist sometimes it can bite me in the behind and prolongs some of my creativity because you always want to be perfect with everything you do so it’s a gift and a curse,” he said

His passion and work in this field started back in 2007. At that time he was not directly into filming and recording having not had any real experiences with cameras as such but rather he was into music. For those who are familiar would recall the days of him being a local rapper.

“I used to watch a lot of music videos, the love of music and the love of rap led me to the interest of music videos because basically that’s music in motion and hence the drive to want to capture moving images," he said.

He decided to marry photography and music and learning from reading magazines like The Source. Cognizant of the fact that persons have a deeper attractiveness to visuals as opposed to reading he decided to produce a DVD magazine called the V-Islander DVD Magazine.

It was from that point he became very interactive with local rappers as through is DVD Magazine production he interviewed and had local rappers do some free style. “If you are familiar with DTM, James Lee from East End (who did the song ‘I wanna nookie tonight, nookie, nookie’)…”

A few locals were also interviewed and before you know it he had a product. “I invested in a duplicator….it cost quite a lot of money for that time, so I duplicated other DVDs …. And I sold it and it got crazy response and that’s kind of how the public knew me for doing these videos.”

More than any other place it went wild in the prison. “It had the features like the I-Candy segment where I would take a beautiful young lady and she would dance and the prison was really appreciative of it because these guys were locked away and they wanted to be connected with the outside world per se,” said Richards Jr.

The long and short of it as the years progressed he became more advanced and professional in the field as he kept taking the craft from one stage to another but there were the challenges of a small country, a people who wanted to take his work for free and most of all the universal cry for persons not being receptive to local artists. “It was less profitable so I decided I can’t carry on with this, it’s not working but I love the film thing now, so what do I do?”

He took a passion and a hobby and turned it into a business, “So that’s what I did. It was V-Islander films at first and then I wanted to kind of broaden my horizon so I changed the name from V-Islander films to V-Islander media which it is today,” he said. He has produced many of the music videos which got recognition on a wide scale.

“I have grown up to love it, it’s me. It’s not just what I do, it’s me and when you do you, who does you better than you... Nobody and if that’s me I’ll have to be really good at it.”

He sees himself into the career on a 9-5 basis come the next five to ten years. But he would call from government to companies to the residents to embrace not just what he does but more than any other thing embrace local artists.

“I was sick and tired of seeing our government and the locals go abroad for these talents and if their argument is that it’s not here, let me bring it here and show you that it’s here and then if you continue to go abroad it was never the fact that you were looking for the talent here it’s that you didn’t care to support your own cause trust me I stocked up well…”

His advice to youths, “I would tell them first make sure that the field that you want to pursue is the one that you really want to pursue. It’s not easy so you have to have a passion not just in an urge to make more money or to get rich but you have to want to do this. That’s the only way that you can be successful because the obstacles that you would face will deter you if it’s not a passion because it’s not something that you really want to do…”

He further said that with determination to achieve your passion one would not hear the naggings of discrimination; one would be blind to the road blocks and will be driven.

He also said, “I want to also advise them that they need to make sacrifices, they need to invest in themselves because I love clothes I love to dress up and stuff like that but I made the sacrifice to just be like a bum so I can afford these things.”

He further called on locals and companies to be more receptive to his line of work and their show of support for local talents. “Help us to get to where we need to go.”

“Business owners please… allow me to shoot on your premises… allow me to use it. We are met with a lot of road blocks and a lot of NOs... It’s much more than the polish, it’s the location and the actors and everything that make our productions look like they are foreign…” he pleaded.