On a slim $40,000 budget, I directed and produced Our Thousand Days, a five-part docuseries for Cascade PBS documenting the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans through the stories of Bainbridge Islanders and Seattleites.
The series needed a visual and animation language with no precedent in PBS's programming, and I pitched, sold, and delivered it — airing on Cascade PBS and streaming on PBS.org as of April 2026.
What this piece proves: I can land a pitch with a broadcaster, hold a vision across five episodes, stretch a budget and scale a production to whatever the work demands.
My Team
Animation
Narrative animated sequences carried the storytelling in this series, and the choice came from a gap I noticed in other documentaries on the subject. Adult survivors recalling childhood created distance; the audience heard memories instead of living moments. Animation closed that gap.
Viewers experience being removed from homes the way our interviewees actually did: as young children, watching parents struggle to shield them from the full weight of what was happening. Sometimes craft's job is to disappear, so the story is all that's left.
Cinematography
Memory was the visual and thematic foundation of this series. Our photography diffuse toward the edges, echoing the way memories fade at the periphery, while the interview cinematography used vintage lenses and shallow depth of field for a soft, dreamlike focus. Both techniques draw audiences into the survivors’ recollections, where past and present converge.
Motion Design
The motion had one job: put the viewer inside the discovery. Every sequence unfolds like a case file opened in real time, evidence surfacing as the story does. I built a system for maps, supers, text highlights, and diagrams of living conditions, all timed to the cadence of the interviewees telling their own stories. The rule underneath it: motion follows testimony, never the other way around.
Animation Storyboards
