From mom's east-end garage to LA fashion film

Just a few short years ago, Miguel Gauthier was running a recording studio out of his Sault east-end garage, playing in a band, and teaching himself the ins and outs of the world of photography.

Less than two weeks ago, Gauthier found himself on the red carpet at the La Jolla International Fashion Film Festival with six nominations and one award under his belt.

It's safe to say, quite a bit has happened in the life of Mr. Gauthier in between.

He started up Stereo Soul Studios in the Sault as a means to lay down some tracks with his own band, Gauthier told SooToday.com.

It didn't take long before other musician friends and local bands approached him to record their albums, one of the first being Gates of Winter.

"I had a blast with those guys," he recalled. "It took six months to record that album and it nearly killed me. But we did it because we loved it."

Gauthier ran Stereo Soul Studios successfully in the Sault for approximately five years, recording more than 20 albums, a variety of jingles, and other projects.

"Because of demand from the artists we worked with, we also started doing photo work, album covers, and website design. Everything developed organically," he said.

"Eventually we got to a place where we plateaued and I had to decided if I wanted to stay in a small market and except this as my life, or relocate to a larger city with bigger resources and opportunities," he explained. "I chose not to settle."

So, in late 2010, Gauthier decided to give his family their garage back, take the plunge, and move to the sunshine of Los Angeles, California.

"Just like everything in my life, its never something I set out to do, but rather life taking me by the hand (sometimes unwillingly) and placing me where I should be," he told us. "There's a lot of chance and luck in all of this, but also a lot of hard work."

Since relocating Stereo Soul Studios to LA, Gauthier has worked in a range of formats, first shooting fashion stills, then moving to music videos, commercials, and short films.

"Several years back, one of the designers I was preparing a photo shoot for asked me if we could also do some video of the shoot," he said.

Not wanting to say no to a client even though he'd never done any video work before, Gauthier agreed.

"My first video was rubbish," he joked, "but it was a great learning experience and I completely fell in love with the craft. It allows me to bring things to life by taking what I was doing in photography to a completely higher level of story telling."

In addition to fashion and taking in the beauty of California from behind a lens, Gauthier still finds himself at the sound board recording and mixing for television, film, and video games.

He joined the crew of the Showtime smash hit Dexter in the series' sixth season working for composer Daniel Licht, someone Gauthier describes as 'brilliant'.

"He offered me my first job when I moved to LA. He's become a great mentor and a great friend," he said. "Dan was actually one of the first people to encourage me to start directing. He saw my first video, and despite how bad it was, he saw a lot of promise and potential in it and told me I would be crazy not to see where it lead me."

Gauthier's studio was responsible for photography, music videos and some graphic work for the MTV reality series, The Alectrix, and just recently signed a deal with Grammy-winning producers Midi Mafia to handle visuals for their developing artists.

His list of credits also include sound engineer for the ABC series, Body of Proof; the films Compulsion, Split Decision, and Pride of Lions; and mixing for the recent Silent Hill and Dishonored video games.

However, the project that lead Gauthier to the glam and glitter of the La Jolla International Fashion Film Festival was for no one but himself.

He teamed up with award-winning fashion photographer Viktorija Pashuta to create a short film specifically for the festival, working for five months in pre-production, assembling a crew of 53, and recruiting more than 20 models, dancers, actors and fighters.

"We pulled from a lot of personal working relationships from my music video and commercial history, and Viktorija's editorial history to assemble a fantastic team," he told us.

The duo co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed Lovers Game which earned six award nominations - Best Film, Best Director, Best Composer, Best Fashion, Best Makeup, and Best Hairstyling.

At the end of the day, Lovers Game took home the hardware for Best Fashion, something Gauthier is especially proud of considering the competition.

"I was just hoping to get selected and have our film premiere at the festival," he explained. "Of course you always want your film to do well, but I never imaged we would get nominated for so many awards. It was definitely a thrill to see our names next to these huge brands."

Fashion houses participating in the festival included Armani, Alexander McQueen, Guess, Diesel, Free People and a number of other large brands.

Gauthier and Pashuta worked with a dedicated team of designers - including Peter Phan, Miss G Designs, and Erin Brown - to create the majority of the clothing, he told us, with most of the central pieces designed from scratch.

Fashionistas can expect to see more of Gauthier as he sees the fashion film medium as the natural progression of the industry.

"It used to be that the fashion world was dominated by photos since most of its viewership was magazine-based," he said. "But now since everything has gone digital and people want videos, designers and labels have started to realize they need to provide that content."

"I love the fashion film genre," he said, comparing it to the music video boom of the 80s. "Its a relatively new genre still in its infancy, but its not going away any time soon. Neither am I."

To learn more about Miguel Gauthier and Stereo Soul Studios, please click here