Why Am I This Way?
Short documentary on a young man living with mental illness. Wrote, directed, shot, edited, colored. For Our Daily Bread.
James Fazio
Stories, owned end to end.
Fifteen years of documentary and brand film across 40+ countries. Concept, script, shoot, edit, finish. Now with an AI-native pipeline.
Time Well Spent
Feature documentary. Festival Best Documentary awards, distributed by Vertical Entertainment, streaming on Prime Video. Writer, director, producer, editor.
Selected work
Forgotten Bloodlines
Teaser. A forgotten people group on the Nepal-Tibet border. Shot on location in the Himalayas.
ORIGINS
Eight-minute anime episode, the Shibui Universe origin story. Written and directed.
Pirates of Fukushū Shanty
Animated shanty from the Shibui Universe. Written, directed, edited.
The Last Passage
Live-action pilot from the Eternal Blade screenplay, adapting the manga's unreleased opening chapter. 100% AI-generated (Seedance, GPT Image, Suno). Written, directed, edited.
Still Running
Animated short, no dialogue. Dr. Jones runs the length of the Shibui Universe, every location and cameo canon. AI-generated from Izaac Rodrigues' hand-drawn art (Seedance, GPT Image, Suno). Written, directed, edited.
Soulless Citadel
Concept trailer, 100% AI-generated visuals (Midjourney and Higgsfield). Written and edited.
Tern Travel
Brand documentary on a client give-back trip in Bali. Written, shot, directed, edited. For Tern Travel and Salesforce.
Keck Observatory
Director of photography. Shot on location at the Keck Observatory on Maunakea. For HEIDENHAIN, via LoSasso.
Security Product Ad
Product spot built with AI-generated visuals and motion graphics.
Shibui Coffee Ad
Comic ad spot for Shibui Coffee in Bali, 100% AI-generated. Written, directed, edited.
Nothing in that category yet.
About
I didn't come to storytelling through film school. I came to it through fifteen years of humanitarian work in more than forty countries, sitting with people whose stories were never going to be told unless someone picked up a camera. That conviction became a self-funded feature documentary that won festival awards and landed distribution, short docs for global organizations, and eventually Shibui Universe, my own cross-media franchise with a manga live on MangaPlus.
I believe stories shape how people answer the biggest questions: who am I, and what am I here for. Whether it's a documentary, a brand film, or an anime episode, that's the thread I'm pulling on.
Today I work with a fully AI-integrated pipeline (Higgsfield, Midjourney, Claude) alongside traditional craft. I own the whole arc: research, script, shoot, edit, finish.