Documentary is where Dreamtone started and it still sets the standard for everything else we make. It is the discipline that teaches you how to sit in a room long enough for someone to tell you the truth, and how to build a piece around what they actually said rather than what you hoped they would say.

Our subjects tend to be people the city was about to forget. A tenant with thirty-one years in one room. A developer who changed how New Yorkers are legally allowed to live. A generation of writers whose work was painted over by the same institutions now selling it back.

Blake Davis has been making this kind of work for two decades and across four countries. He edited in London, ran studio operations and multimedia production in Jerusalem, toured Israel as a live A/V director, produced events in Paris, and has taught video and spray paint workshops to young people in Israel, Palestine, and New York. That range is not a travel list. It is the reason the work does not sound like a New York production company explaining a place to itself.

Recent and ongoing projects include Room 1014, a seven-part series on the Hotel Chelsea, a feature documentary on graffiti pioneer Mike 171, and A Muse Inn, on an artist who saved several thousand objects from a hotel that was being gutted around him.

Gerald DeCock has lived in Room 1014 at the Hotel Chelsea since October 1994. He moved in when the hotel was still a working artists' hotel, when you could be broke, brilliant, and find a place that would have you. He stayed through every change of ownership, every renovation dispute, and every turn of the city's wheel.

Then the current owners decided they wanted him out. Their offer was fifty thousand dollars and four months to vacate. His attorney had gone unreachable. His case had been rejected at every level, from DHCR to the Supreme Court to the Appellate Division to Albany. He had no public platform, no social media presence, and nobody in his corner.

That is where we came in.

Between March 13 and April 8 we released seven documentary episodes on Instagram and TikTok, tracking the story in real time. His thirty-one year history at the Chelsea, the specifics of the legal case, the hotel's contradictions, and the clock running down to a court hearing. The series found its audience quickly and kept growing, reaching viewers across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and beyond.

Every episode was built around a real goal. Here is what the series produced beyond views.

i. Gerald secured new legal representation, funded by a painting sale the series made possible.

ii. The Director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants responded directly to advocacy materials we produced on his behalf.

iii. Gerald filed to release prior counsel and request a new hearing date, supported by legal summaries and advocacy documents Dreamtone prepared.

iV. A story previously covered by the New York Times, CBS, and Architectural Digest reached a new generation of viewers who showed up, shared, and acted.

“We weren’t building a campaign. 

We built an artist identity