This week’s interview is with David Cowles. I have never met David, so we conducted this interview via emails and texts. It’s always interesting to meet new people, whether in person or online.

Looking back, David named two specific teachers that he said “prepared me for success”—Phil Winegar and Craig Olson. He credits Mr. Winegar as the person who taught a number of tech classes that gave him a hands-on approach to understanding the relationship between computer software and hardware. Although David works in a creative field now, knowing how to troubleshoot the underlying hardware and how it integrates into a facility has given him an extra edge many times over the years. That knowledge and the spark to keep learning started in those tech courses.

That’s also what introduced David to video shooting and editing, laying the foundation for his current career. “I fondly remember making a short film on the abandoned Red Cedar River railroad bridge for a school project. In those days you could still access the rails to climb across and down to the river. I recall that Mr. Winegar was not impressed with our disregard for safety!”

Civics class, taught by Craig Olson, has had a lasting impact on David’s understanding of our political system and how we got here. “The daily quizzes still stick in my brain! Things like the relationship between interest rates and bonds don’t make a lot of sense to a high schooler but bear much more relevance to me now that I’m older!” According to David, “We were so blessed with amazing teachers in every department. I only mentioned the two above specifically, but every department had teachers that genuinely cared for their students’ wellbeing and education.”

Outside of school, David played club soccer through the Red Cedar Soccer Association. Because of Menomonie’s location, the team mostly played teams from Minnesota. That meant that there was a lot of travel over the summers. Getting that “fill” of soccer meant that he didn’t have much appetite to play for the MHS team in the fall. As David noted, “That’s possibly one of my biggest regrets from that time.” Besides soccer, David was also heavily into guitar and “probably spent more time learning rock riffs when I should have been studying. You’ll see in my senior photo that I’m posing with my green Les Paul.”

David remembers picking strawberries out at Red Cedar Valley Farms in the summer for a couple of years. “Early cold mornings working in the dirt.” One summer he got the opportunity to work with UW-Stout’s IT department. That was another reinforcement of tech hardware knowledge that still comes in handy. After his high school graduation, David completed two years at UW-Whitewater in the Electronic Media program. He realized after those two years that being either a cinematographer or film editor was the specific path he wanted to pursue. He transferred to UW-Oshkosh and finished his B.A. degree in its Radio-TV-Film program.

In 2010, David moved to Los Angeles where his first big break was with a studio that specialized in 3D (or stereoscopic) films. Most of the big blockbusters were released in 3D around that time. We did all the phase-one Marvel films like “Thor,” “Captain America” and “Avengers.” We also got the opportunity to make stereoscope conversions of older films like “Jurassic Park” and “Titanic.” Getting to work with these experienced directors and watching them operate when I was at such an early point of my career was fascinating. That job ultimately took me to London and Sydney, Australia, for other film work, most notably “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

After that David worked at a boutique visual effects studio for a year, doing mostly television work. That’s when he started expanding his color grading portfolio, leading him to his current role as a colorist at Warner Bros. Animation. Here he has had the opportunity to work on a variety of shows from “Scooby-Doo” to “Tom and Jerry.” “I just wrapped up on the kids’ show “Batwheels” (on HBO Max) and “Caped Crusader” (on Amazon).”

“In 2019 I married my amazing wife Kaylie, who is originally from Los Angeles. Since then, we’ve added our4-year-old daughter Chloe and our dog Luna to the family.” Having an active daughter, there isn’t a lot of extra time for hobbies. However, David has been maintaining and slowly restoring his 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442. He and his dad found the car at a 2004 car show, and David drove it all through college. After school, David’s parents (Gary and Debbie) stored it in their garage until he had space for it in California a few years ago. He is hoping to refresh it to better-than-new over the next few years.

Currently the Cowles family lives in Burbank, CA and David continues to be a colorist at Warner Bros. Animation. When I asked David to tell us what made Menomonie a special place for him to grow up in, he replied, “The smalltown nature of Menomonie is something I took for granted growing up. There was always somebody you knew in the part of town you were in. Friends and I would bike all over and it never felt unsafe.”

Special thanks to David for enthusiastically connecting with me on this interview! He’s an MHS grad that we can all be proud to call one of our own!