Colten Sikes here. I’m an award-winning cinematographer and editor based in Oklahoma City, but I come from small-town Nebraska. Growing up in a small town, you have to make your own kind of fun with not many resources. Friend’s driveways become stadiums for streetball tournaments and cattle tanks are the new inner tubes (google it). But half of the fun is in the creative process.

I’ve had the privilege of traveling across the US and overseas for work. From large commercial sets to scrappy independent documentaries, the more that I’ve been a part of, the more I’ve realized there are glaring similarities in our differences. Through this journey of honing my craft, the fundamentals of a story remain the same…

And an empathetic ear is how you discover it.

It’s an honor to use this medium as a way to communicate, and this small-town kid has a knack for it.