At 19 years old, producer Ethan Seneker is at the top of his game. There ain’t no mountain high enough—at least not in Seattle. During a recent trip back to his hometown for the National Film Festival for Talented Youth—his eighth year in attendance—Seneker, talking quickly and panting slightly, ascends Mount Si for the first time in a long time, claiming he’s “not tired or anything.”
While he once took the mesmerizing views for granted—the same views made famous by David Lynch in the TV show Twin Peaks—he’s since gained an appreciation.
“Moving to L.A. put a lot of things into perspective,” says Seneker, who’s been involved in the film industry ever since he was nine, an actor turned writer and producer.
Bypassing the traditional film school route—“Pointless,” he says, due to the debt he’d have to spend years paying off—Seneker moved to California for what he describes as a school-meets-fellowship experience created by film studio Relativity Media. Around six months in, Seneker dropped out of that program and became a consultant for the studio’s digital department. A few months later, the studio went bankrupt and he got laid off.
But for Seneker, it’s all silver linings.
Being “on the inside of a company crumbling like that,” the WeWork member witnessed how spreading your business too thin can detract from what you originally sought out to accomplish.
So what next?
Seneker focused his attention on his own short film about self-awareness, The Color of My Shadow. In need of funding, Seneker paired up with an agency called Saddle Road, billed as a place where “your art and creativity flourish.”
Seneker soon became the head of production for the company’s digital team. He drafted a proposal for how he wanted to transform the department, which he says was on the traditional side, sticking to feature films, commercials, and corporate work. Saddle Road even got a space at WeWork Gas Tower specifically for the digital team.
“They didn’t really have much of a digital presence, which nowadays is absolutely essential,” says Seneker. To change that, he secured partnership deals: one with an ad agency that makes series for brands, and the other with a company that’s developing projects in virtual reality.
Working at Saddle Road has given Seneker a chance to think about what he’d like to accomplish in the next few years.
“That’s something that I started resonating with recently,” Seneker admits. “I’ve gone through the phase of how to do something, and now I’m beginning the phase on why I do it. So just really focusing on learning more about who I am, under the skin, and figuring out: What do I like? What moves me? What do I find wonder in?”
Last month, Seneker started his own company called Spark Medium. Seneker says that it’s going to produce “a series of raw, really micro-short real glimpses into people’s lives around the world.”
“I’ve always been asked the question of ‘What kind of movies do you make?’” says Seneker, a huge fan of directors Steven Soderbergh and Nicolas Winding Refn. “I want to make intimate movies, where when you’re watching it, sometimes the rest of the world sorta goes black. You’re in it. You’re there.”
Photos: Bettina Niedermann