Patrick Shen

Patrick has been involved in the entertainment business since the age of 16 when he first performed on stage as a musician with his ridiculously awesome metal band, Apocalypse. Soon after that he would discover his second passion in life while taking a video/film production course at Mission Viejo High School, California. It is there where he would achieve super video geek status, spending three to five hours a day shooting and editing short films.

While attending college to pursue degrees in psychology and philosophy, Patrick began to receive offers to produce and edit corporate videos and commercials for such clients as Kingston Technology, Gucci, Toshiba, and Yamaha. On the side, Patrick would feed his music habit, performing in bands and composing soundtracks for various short films and corporations such as Lexus and Toyota.

In 1996, Patrick landed a full-time position at E! Entertainment Television performing roles such as audio engineer, Chyron operator, and teleprompter on Emmy Award winning shows like Talk Soup and E! News. Four years later, he left E! to pursue work in documentaries full-time, beginning with a role as Second Unit Director on the Emmy-nominated We Served With Pride, which resulted in a meeting with President Clinton in the Oval Office.

Shortly after leaving E!, Patrick founded Transcendental Media, an independent film production company whose goal is to create films and documentaries to “agitate the sleep of mankind”. The first feature project to be completed under the TM designation came in 2003 with the multi-award winning, Flight from Death: the Quest for Immortality. Flight from Death was Patrick’s first feature-length film, which he directed, edited, co-wrote, and co-produced. This critically acclaimed film, beautifully photographed in eight countries and three years in the making, earned seven “Best Documentary” awards at film festivals around the country. Flight from Death was released domestically in 2005, in Australia and New Zealand in 2006, and continues to screen at universities, theaters, and TV stations all over the world.

In June of 2009, Patrick’s newest feature documentary, the award-winning The Philosopher Kings, premiered to sold-out audiences at the AFI/Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Documentary. The Philosopher Kings, a documentary about the wisdom found among custodians employed at some of America’s most prestigious universities, opened theatrically in Los Angeles on May 21, 2010 and will premiere on The Documentary Channel on Labor Day, September 6, 2010. Patrick is currently in post-production on a new documentary feature called La Source.