Intern Keishawn Blackstone

Keishawn Blackstone is an Urban City Youth team member who joined UCY at the age of 17. He was featured in Forbes Magazine as one of the youngest and fastest climbing talents in the film industry.

By age 16 Keishawn made up his mind that film was his only career passion.  He studied film at Los Angeles City College for one semester and the rest became history. Within two weeks of joining Urban City Youth he was on set, laying out scenes, storyboarding, while playing with camera angles on two high end cameras. He was awarded a Mac book Pro including a Final Cut Pro program and free use of all the sound recording, film and lighting gear at UCY. His learning on the job catapulted him to a new era in his career.  “He is one of those rare talents that literally must have been born with a camera; he proved early on to be a natural Director of Production.”, said UCY Executive Director Tommy Jones… He successfully served as Director of Production for two UCY films.

Keishawn is the owner of his own media production company in Hollywood. Known as Director Blackstone, he believes the field experience he received while at Urban City Youth is just as valuable as studying it in college. Keshawn  regards Urban City Youth as a launching pad to his success. 

In his own words, Director Blackstone identifies the skills learned, practiced and developed while at Urban City Youth to include yet not limited to the following:

• Leadership Development – for Directing a set of 20+ crew and talent
• Time – Management
• Multi-Tasking – on a daily production clock – always wrapping a set before time limit.
• People Skills
• Personal Development as a film maker/producer
• Location Management
• Set Design – Prop Placement
• Lighting Design 
• Audio design on the set
• Audio Mixing, final sound editing/ sweetening
• Strategy Execution
• Massive Film Editing – Pre- Post and during

“I remain grateful for Urban City Youth, Los Angeles, California – THANK YOU SO – SO MUCH! URBAN CITY YOUTH!”, says Keishawn.

Stay tuned for many more great film works in the making from Director Blackstone.