LVL^

A new challenger approaches…

I began ideating LVL^ back in 2019.
A friend and I were running a weekly podcast where we would break bread with creatives from DC and Baltimore. The relationships fostered through this cultivated a community of friends and collaborators that I lean on to this day. A common thread that would pop up repeatedly amongst creatives in my circle was a passion for video games, and specifically, a passion for the Nintendo fighting game, Super Smash Bros. This generated my initial concept for a documentary on the local gaming
scene in Baltimore and the DMV and its intersection with other underground creative scenes.

Around April 2020 – I was connected with ScoreSwayze and Michelangelo “Valentino” Hayes of four4threegaming. They’d already been putting in the work of creating intentional spaces for folx at these intersections to compete and build
community. This started with virtual spaces during the pandemic where they would produce livestreamed tournaments over
twitch and Youtube. Peak pandemic time, I was asked to compete in one of their Smash events. I humbly got my ass beat on
live stream and had a blast in the process. Months passed by and I continued passively gestating the doc concept.

In November 2021, over a instagram DM convo with Valentino, I mentioned to him that I’d been sitting on this documentary
idea. He immediately gave me a call and informed me that he and ScoreSwayze were months into planning their first in person
event – a Smash Tournament set to take place in January at a tech repair shop/event space in Baltimore (M.A.P. Technologies).

From that point on the wheels were set in motion and I set out to document the events, with whatever resources available to
me, as genuinely and authentically as I could.
LVL^ is the collaborative working product of all of that, and I’m proud as fuck of it.