Ethnographer 0f Tech
I teach documentary storytelling at Northern Arizona University. I also research it — specifically why some stories make people stop, feel something, and act, while others are scrollable.
While filming my documentary on ambient pioneer Steve Roach, I realized his origin story was being lost to his gear. His synthesizers were plastic and metal, but his vision was born in the desert.
To tell his story, I had to move past the technology and into desert landscapes and into his studio — his "shaman's cave" — to unearth the poetic heart behind the electricity.
I see similar struggles in high-tech innovation.
As the Ethnographer of Tech, I film the human in the noise.
With a PhD from NYU and research roots at MIT, I apply doctoral-level rigor to the chaotic world of startups. Through Narrative Capital, I ensure your mission is no longer just analyzed as a technical spec, but felt as a visceral necessity.
Because in a saturated market, what isn’t felt is forgotten.
Using a 4-step Ethnographic Framework — the same doctoral-level rigor used to study human behavior — we delve beneath the surface complexity of tech (a "tax" that hinders clear communication to your potential clients and prevents deep human connection) to discover the narratives driving human experience.
1. Fieldwork
2. Narrative Blueprint
3. Sensory Engineering
4. Strategic Asset
Deep-tech founders face the problem of communicating their new tech. It's a real breakthrough, but little of
it comes through to an potential investors when explained. Specs don't move capital. Jargon doesn't move talent.
overcoming the complexity tax
EVERY ASSET WE BUILD GIVES EQUAL WEIGHT TO THREE ELEMENTS: IMAGE, SOUND, AND INTERVIEW.
Most video production starts with what you want to say. We start with image and sound,
the visual storytelling that hooks potential investors into your story.
We build your Strategic Cinema Asset around a way of knowing that goes beyond words, a sensory, bodily knowledge, where potential investors feel it through their senses.
Image.
Not wall paper B-roll, but visual presence. A held shot from where a body stands, showing your work the way it's lived, not staged for the camera. We take "show, don't tell" to heart.
Strategic Asset
A corporate video explains. A Strategic Cinema Asset
makes the room feel the work. The method comes from
the same tradition that gave us Harvard University's
Sensory Ethnography Lab. We not only show you the
scene, we make you feel it.
Interviews
Present and necessary, but wall-to-wall talking does not exist in our projects. Your own words matter, but they're one part of the film.
If words are telling the investor how to think and feel about your work, your product, we've failed at the thing we were hired to do.
Sound.
Our sound design carries the same narrative weight as the image. We use Walter Murch's and Ernst Karel's sound design techniques to shape the frequencies, rhythms, and patterns
of the natural sound environment.
Kurt Lancaster documentary demo reel.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY
— Donald Miller, authror of Building a Story Brand
"We have to work really hard when we are communicating information to people who don't have the same level of expertise that we have."
"[W]e'll lose to an inferior product if our competitor's offer is communicated more clearly."
"What if the problem wasn't the product? What if it was the way we talked about the product?"
Why experts struggle to explain their work
— Miro Kazakoff, MIT Senior Lecturer
— Katie Deighton, WSJ
"Executives said 'storyteller' or 'story-telling' on earnings calls and investor days 469 times in 2025 — versus 147 times in 2015."
Companies Are Desperately Seeking Storytellers
