My name is Brandon Gaesser.  I am a non-fiction videographer/editor with a collaborative spirit.  Most of all, I feel fortunate to be able to work with, listen to, and learn from diverse communities to help bring their stories to the world.  With training in cinema cameras, producing, and editing, combined with backgrounds in photography and music, I love wearing many hats across a wide range of projects from concept to delivery.  This often helps when working with limited budgets on tight deadlines.  

 

With an MFA in Documentary Film from Wake Forest University, I welcome the opportunity to share what I’ve learned in the field with students in the classroom.  During my studies, it was a rewarding experience to serve as a teaching assistant for courses in cinematography and sound, advanced cinematography, and environmental journalism, and to have helped students collaboratively engage with their surrounding communities on project-based assignments.  

​

Because meaningful change is often grassroots, I believe in featuring compelling stories from our surroundings: local people, organizations, and communities working as advocates and guardians in the journey toward changing our anthropocentric footprint one step at a time.  These are stories that we never learn about in the 24-hour news "recycle."

​

Viewing myself more as a listener and participants as the storytellers, I continuously strive to film and edit with a code of ethics that is not intrusive, but inclusive.  When you grow up in a family of talkers, as I did, your default option is to listen, observe, and learn.  And that’s what I did. As an emerging doc filmmaker, I’ve discovered that listening and observing are the most important tools of the trade.  A camera helps too.   

​

I collaborated with the Wake Forest University Department of Engineering and non-profit Yadkin River Keeper, as they studied local watersheds to provide accessible water quality information to local communities.  This research and documentary short film were published online in the journal, Nature.

​

​Now, an assistant professor in the UNT Documentary Production and Studies Program, I teach documentary cinematography, film production courses, and mentor MFA students.  I am a member of AERI, UNT’s Advanced Environmental Research Institute.  For my current research project, “Unplugged” (working title), I have traveled all over the state of Texas to chronicle the Produced Water problem and its impacts on people, land, and groundwater.  The feature documentary is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2026.  

      

Chicken Soup for the Soil was my first film.  It was selected to air on PBS North Carolina for Earth Day, 2025.