Q. Ajimine

My name is Quddus Ajimine, but most call me “Q.” I hold a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Digital Cinematography which I earned from Full Sail University. I was also honored as the Valedictorian of my class. I have worked as a freelance contractor and independent filmmaker for many years. The majority of my experience is as a corporate videographer and photographer. As an independent filmmaker, I have worked on several indie films over the past 16 years. In those years, I’ve worked on several independent films in Hawaii, California and Colorado. I’ve worked in most of the various departments on film/video sets, from audio and camera to location and post production. Filmmaking is my passion and cinematography is my love. Though I like working in any department, I prefer the camera department.

I have the accumulative equivalent of at least three years of administrative and project management experience. A lot of people do not realize that there is a lot of administrative work, project management, and business management involved in filmmaking. I have done things as diverse as, research for everything from equipment to location to insurance needs. I have designed workflows for preproduction, actual production, as well as post production to make sure that every bit of time is utilized as efficiently as possible. As the saying goes, “time is money.”

I have worked in the construction trade, as a laborer, a framer, small equipment operator, and an apprentice builder for about four years. It was very similar to filmmaking, in the sense that the workflows and processes are about the same in terms of the relationships with departmentalization.

I am also a US Navy veteran. I joined when I graduated from high school and served from 1990 to 1995. My main schooling was in avionics and aviation electronics warfare maintenance, but I also spent time working in the aircraft division, as a corrosion control technician. This included painting the unit’s tail logo. The majority of my tour was spent in Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 2. Rota, Spain was our homeport, but we also had deployment sites in Sicily and Crete. I love travel and culture. I have visited almost every Western European country and find each one uniquely beautiful. I have also been to Okinawa, Japan and Samoa, Savai’i (Western) and Upolu (American).

After the Navy, I went back home to Maui, went to college for a couple of years then worked various jobs including construction. I eventually fell into cinematography after attending a couple of semesters of USC’s School of Cinema-TV, which had a partnership with the Hawaii Filmmaker’s Initiative. My proclivity as a middle-brainer made cinematography a natural fit, because it includes, both artistic and technical facets. After working on my first independent film, I was hooked and the rest, as they say, is history.

The majority of my experience came by way of camera work on live events, like film festivals, local concerts, pageants and film forums, but none of that fulfilled my creative desires. As I gained experience, I started getting requests to help with production projects where I started dabbling more in video editing. This led to sound and eventually into full blown videography. I fell into the corporate video industry completely by accident, while on vacation, visiting a friend in Colorado.

My passion for filmmaking still burns and I continue to work on film projects as they present themselves.