At Kempsville High School, Alex Dickerson-Watson was the video guy who stole his mother’s point-and-shoot camera to record his friends making music.
Now, with a sophisticated camera and perspective, Dickerson, 35, is a filmmaker whose documentary-in-the-making, “The Video Guy,” traces the lives of five local African American men by going behind the scenes of their rap dreams.
“The Video Guy” received international recognition this summer as it won The Whickers Pitch, a film and TV funding award, presented by the Sheffield DocFest in England. It beat out more than 800 entries from 86 countries for funding that helps promising documentaries get off the ground.
Dickerson and his film partner, Ireland-based Sam Howard, received £ 100,000 — about $134,000 U.S. dollars — to continue the project and secure an American film production partner.
"The Video Guy" will have taken six years to make by the time it’s released in 2027.
Judges’ remarks singled out “The Video Guy” as “a raw and tender film that gives viewers access to a world we don’t normally see. Through the passion and vulnerability of Alex, the Video Guy, we are offered a longitudinal look at a group of friends as they grow into adulthood and the choices they have to make to survive in today’s America.”
Dickerson is self-taught and became skilled at making music videos, transitioning from shooting friends to earning money by creating videos for others. His unique perspective on each character in "Video Guy" comes from spending more than a decade with them, following their trajectories, and observing others he met. The film explores the dichotomy of the men in their personal lives versus their alter egos from music videos.
“The goal of the film is to show who these men are,” said Dickerson, who still lives in Virginia Beach. “They’re not dangerous. You don’t have to cross the street when you see them walking down the street. They’re human beings. They have kids. They’re fathers, people’s brothers.”
Some of the archived footage from a decade ago is part of the 90-minute film that “shows the nuances of the music industry and what is presented versus what is actual real life,” Dickerson said.
Howard refers to it as " Hoop Dreams’ with rappers.” "We've seen a lot of documentaries about people who want to make it." But the expanse of time covered in the film is one of the details that distinguishes it.
Dickerson is motivated by breaking the stereotypes that too many people believe when they label rappers or even young Black men in public as dangerous. In the documentary, some of the men became young fathers and that responsibility altered their plans.
“Sometimes your personal dreams don’t die," Howard said, "they just change.”
Omar Custis, for example, is first shown in the movie behind the wheel of a purple Mercedes S 500 with two broken arms from stunts he performed on his motorcycle. But that life wasn’t sustainable for Custis, also known as Stuntman, who became a father as a teen.
“I was paying $767 of child support for one kid when I was 18 years old,” Custis said. He went from a job at Jiffy Lube to retail positions, then to shipyard work, and finally to the Merchant Marines. Custis then followed another dream — entrepreneurship. He now owns Innovative Waste, an eco-friendly junk removal company that employs 25 and is based in Virginia Beach.
Music inspired him for the camaraderie it built among his friends, "but I had to pay bills," Custis said.
Another storyline follows Randy Johnson, the most successful artistically among the five, who works as a producer/rapper. Johnson has collaborated with artists including Snoop Dogg and Virginia rapper DRAM, and lived the glitzy side of the profession. At the same time, he watched his mother suffer from bone cancer.
“You see me at one of the highest points of my life and at one of the lowest,” said Johnson, who is known as rapper Randana.
Dickerson, who describes his movie as one about community and resilience, plans to continue filming into next year. Though he is a court reporter by day, he envisions a future of making movies full-time.
Dickerson and Howard will meet up again in Europe next month to pitch the film to the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam Forum, which awards grants for nonfiction filmmaking. "The Video Guy" was one of 51 selected among 841 entries.
"That's another exciting milestone," Dickerson said.