The Sauce

Awards, software, and everything else I’ve made since I picked up a camera. The long tail. Welcome to happy hell.

AWARDS

Bartender at Large won Best Documentary and Best Director (Erick Castro) at the Accolade Global Film Competition, plus official selections at the LA Independent Film Festival Awards, LAIFFA, Cinema New York, Docs Without Borders, and the Singapore Independent Film Festival.

1st place, Legal Marketing Association video competition (national holiday card category, two years running) — that’s Parker Poe. 1st place, Queens College EMBA Business Plan Competition.

SOFTWARE

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, Final Cut, After Effects, Blender, 3ds Max. If you put it in front of me, I’ll learn it.

BANDS

I like to say I invented the funny quips on Taco Bell sauce packets. That’s a lie. My ex did — got paid real money in LA to write those, while I was still driving us around in one shared car. We were also in a band together, Push Pals, out of Charlotte — I played bass. It ended over the car, plus some friendly rivalry over whose band was better. She’s still way too smart for me. Dating her was basically dating AI before AI was cool.

NOT ME

If you Google me, you might find a guy named Blake Rayner who ran The Orchard’s Australia and New Zealand business and signed Halsey and London Grammar. That’s not me — different Blake, spelled with no “o.” But I’m taking credit until someone makes me stop. I’m the Wario of life.

Also true, for the record: I’m the Bob Ross of Picross. I also almost married a lacrosse coach.

WHERE IT STARTED

Apple Inc. (2006–2010) — Sales, then Creative, then Genius duties, right as the first iPhone launched. Trained customers on Final Cut, Logic Pro, and the Adobe suite between repairs. That’s where I fell in love with computers and the digital arts. Studied at the University of North Carolina, class of 2009. Also once sold fine art photography through Timmermeyer Gallery, because why not.

PRESS

Video work has run on The Onion’s A.V. Club and Vice’s Noisey blog, both the US and Germany editions. I filmed Monotonix for Vice — a band who told me, straight-faced, that they wanted to be Led Zeppelin.

ODDS AND ENDS

Death By Audio built me custom pedals. A Place to Bury Strangers orbit. Twenty years of this, and I’m still finding things on the drives.

THE SCENE

I came up in Charlotte’s Milestone scene — the room that hosted legends before anyone cared, and where I opened for Battles. The people were the whole point. Andy the Doorbum, who ended up at East Jesus, the desert art compound past Slab City. Buck, whose parents framed his JNCO jeans and hung them in the house. Neil. Elevator Jay. Stranger Day. The skaters. My old bands. I know them all very well, and they’re in everything I make. I’ve shared houses with Jesse Clasen of HRVRD and Noah Warner from the Avett Brothers’ world. Donald Doolittle is tattooed on my knee. I know what I’m talking about.

I’m the bass player — the BurgerTime guy, running across the layers making the whole sandwich happen. Every CEO and power broker I’ve ever met wishes they’d done what I did. They chased money. I chased… creativity?

GWAR energy, but sweet. If I ever signed you a stupid autograph, I made you sign one back. And if you knew me then, you didn’t know a Blake at all. I went by Blade.