APG/Antonio McDonald/KUAMPAd
Prior to reaching his current status, Antonio "Tronic" McDonald, founder and CEO of creative multimedia production agency KUAMP for 20 years, was just a kid with a camera, shooting photos and videos for fun. This led him to discover his passion, inspiring him to further hone his craft, and aim for greater heights, leaving an understated influence on popular culture that can be felt until today.
Antonio, who was born in the late '70s to an immigrant family hailing from St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, grew up in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, a diverse area with people of various ethnicities living close together. After his parents divorced, Antonio lived with his mother in the same house as many of his aunts, uncles and cousins in a large, tight-knit family. As a child, Antonio was very interested in television, music and sports, three things that would eventually play a huge role in his life.
When Antonio was 10 years old, he asked his mother to buy him a camera. Beginning with the disposable cameras, he eventually moved to a Polaroid camera, which he used to learn the basics of photography, such as angles and composition. He then asked his mother for a video camera, which he had a lot of fun with. Antonio and his friends would take videos of parties such as birthdays and christenings, as well as shoot their own homemade versions of popular TV shows at the time.
In high school, Antonio continued his passion through the introductory curriculum for TV and film production, gravitating the most towards editing. He spent hours in the school's editing bays, learning various techniques and creating home video projects as a way to express his artistic capabilities.
Antonio, who is also talented in music and sports, got accepted to University of New Haven in Connecticut on a football partial scholarship, and he decided to major in music. However, he soon realized that studying music was not for him, and he shifted his major to mass communications in television, film and radio upon the advice of a professor.
"It was then when I grabbed the bull by the horns and didn't look back," he says. "I was thriving, I had a good GPA, and I made the Dean's List. Along with one of my best friends, I also helped revive the university's defunct Communications Club, where I became the president and he was vice president. We would come up with ideas for shows, produce them, then distribute them on the local closed circuit campus TV stations. We had a built-in audience, and we made a lot of programming for the student body, doing everything from sports shows to news shows, as well as lifestyle shows, where we would go around filming people in their dorms."
In his junior year, Antonio applied for an internship at a local news station in Connecticut, but he unfortunately was not accepted. Not to be discouraged, Antonio did more media projects outside the classroom, and one of his favorite professors took him under his wing and they worked together on various projects. After some time, armed with more experience, Antonio reapplied with the news station, and he was accepted, albeit at a different department than he initially targeted. It all worked out for the better, as the department that he joined was more aligned with editing and promotions.
Later, he got an opportunity to apply for another internship at a global music channel, where he was accepted. He revealed to them that he had previously written to them to become an intern when he was 16 years old, but he didn't receive a reply. The second time around, Antonio got accepted, thanks to his extensive experience from both inside and outside the classroom and with the news station.
The music channel was undergoing its golden age in the late '90s and early '00s, and it was playing an important role in the growth of popular culture, not just in the U.S. but all around the world. Many legendary pop music acts were rising during this period, and hip-hop culture was entering the mainstream and gaining widespread global attention. As an intern, Antonio did a wide range of tasks, further familiarizing himself with the industry.
"Despite my small role, I never took it for granted and I really ran with it," Antonio says. "I was able to take my internship into a full-time job by relentlessly knocking on doors and poking my nose into everyone's office, introducing myself as an intern who's graduating soon. I eventually got hired, and I remember the date so clearly: January 16, 2001, the day after Martin Luther King Junior Day."
It was at the music channel where KUAMP, which stands for Keep Up And Make Progress, was formed by Antonio and several of his work friends in 2002. They were all young and hungry media professionals. Through his work at KUAMP and the music channel, Antonio gained connections in the music industry, and he played a vital role in the creative and editing process of the debut music video of one of the most influential hip hop artists of all time.
Incidentally, the music video, which received much critical acclaim, focused on Polaroid photo imagery, which also played a huge role in Antonio's youth. He says that the editing process was quite difficult at the time, as they didn't have access to the sophisticated computer technology used by visual effects artists today.
Since then, KUAMP has pivoted to the advertising and commercial side of things, doing everything from TV shows to commercials, to both branded and original content.
"I believe my career is coming full circle, taking all those skills I learned over the years, coming from the Caribbean, growing up in Brooklyn, learning about photography, playing football in college, interning and working at a global brand, plus creating my own creative production studio. I believe my work has been a vessel to help people understand each other on a larger scale. It's been an amazing journey, with both prayer, family support, key champions and hard work carrying me along the way. I realize that it is an absolute blessing and honor to be able to do what I've done so far, because not everyone can say that they've reached success doing what they absolutely love."