Brandon Esten

Brandon Esten was born to Jan Perry Esten and Ann Loretta Esten (née Lynch) in Southern California. Being that his father was an aerospace engineer, Brandon spent his childhood moving several times around the Midwest. During high school, he became involved in the local community cable station where he learned about documentary style production and learned the craft of telling stories through a camera lens. After graduating, Brandon spent several years at El Camino College where he threw himself into the study of music with a heavy emphasis on Schenkerian theory (via Salzer) under the tutelage of Wally Bower. This solid foundation in structuralism provided him with a powerful method of organizing and prioritizing. In the mid 1990's Brandon began studying and training to be a pilot while taking a full load of classes. His studies culminated in the fall semester of 2001 when he finished the multi-engine commercial certification, he graduated from university as magna cum laude with honors, passed 27 (virtually 32) units of classes with the lowest grade a B, wrote 50 pages of term papers and had a part-time job as a supplemental instructor for the private pilot class at Long Beach City College. During this period his car broke down, he was nearly broke, the 911 attacks occurred and his brother was involved in a life-threatening accident. It was a challenging time to say the least. In 2004 his fortunes changed when he was hired with his first airline gig and was based in Denver, Phoenix and for a brief time in Houston. In 2006 he became a captain and moved to Orlando. During the next 4 years he lived in Atlanta, New York and Cincinnati. Around 2008, Brandon reunited with his friend from high school and college, Chris Adam. After one particular late night session of karaoke, they had an impromptu reading of each others' creative writing. Chris casually shared his stage plays with Brandon, including A Tale of Two Sillies. Brandon immediately recognized the possibility of fashioning it into a screenplay. The two threw themselves into this task and revised, expanded and work-shopped the script for the next several years. In 2010, after a few attempts at shooting the film with no budget, Brandon found himself hired for a lucrative contract in China. By 2012 he had formed a production company ready to shoot A Tale of Two Sillies and the scripts Chris and he had waiting in the wings. In the same way he had deluged himself with tasks during college, the workload during this period was extreme. He was learning to fly a new jet in a foreign country while making arrangements for shooting the movie halfway around the world: the stress and pressure was enormous. The results were positive on all fronts, and the success of the 21-day shoot in December 2012 is a testament to his flexibility, organizational skills and creativity under the gun. The future is bright for Brandon and everyone involved with his company E Tenebris Entertainment. He is confident this film will find its audience and generate a core of fans that will support the next projects.