EMMY WINNER
EMMY WINNER EXECUTIVE PRODUCER / VISUAL DIRECTOR / CREATIVE STRATEGIST
I LEAD WITH taste.
I help studios and brands turn ambitious ideas into campaigns, films, and production systems that survive real deadlines.
My work moves. I stay quiet.
Restraint. Memory. Systems. Finish.
One Emmy. A shelf of nominations. Twenty years producing for Comcast, Disney, BuzzFeed, ATTN:, and Tastemade. One operating principle: human taste leads, AI extends.
Proof at production scale.
Twenty years turning concepts into finished series, campaigns, and production systems for major platforms and audiences.
EMMY AWARD
Outstanding Children's Programming · Well Versed / Nickelodeon
TWO EMMY NOMINATIONS
Including What Am I Eating? and additional series recognition
JAMES BEARD NOMINATION
Street Somm · Tastemade
TRIBECA X AWARD
Girls Room · Dove × Lena Waithe
MULTIPLE TELLY AND SOCIAL MEDIA AWARDS
Branded, digital, and social video excellence
SELECTED PRODUCTION RECORD
Built to ship at scale.
EMMY NOMINEE
What Am I Eating?
CULTURAL DOCUMENTARY
A New Green Book
JAMES BEARD NOMINEE
Street Somm
32-EPISODE ORDER
Dish It Out
TRAVEL + FOOD SERIES
Worth the Hype
Also: Worth It / BuzzFeed Unsolved / Quinta vs. Everything / Hunted / Girls Room / Undeniable / On Call
BROWSE ADDITIONAL SELECTED CREDITS
SELECTED VIDEO WORK
Video work, directed with intent.
Commercial direction, character-led experiments, and cinematic concepts shaped through story, visual language, performance, sound, and finish.
DIRECTED EXPERIMENT / SEEDANCE 2.5
Nala - Heads Drop
A 30-second re-direction study built to see whether a new model could carry a character, a performance, and an editorial idea all the way through a finished piece.
I designed Nala and re-directed the entire film in Seedance 2.5 using the original project assets Higgsfield released for public experimentation. Rather than reproduce the source shot for shot, I rebuilt the piece around my character design, brutalist staging, choreographed movement, and a sharper visual rhythm.
The study treats the model as part of a production process: character continuity, performance, choreography, camera distance, edit rhythm, and finish are evaluated as one system instead of a string of generated clips.
COLLABORATIVE COMMERCIAL STUDY / 30 SECONDS
DARE / Together
A pickup game turns a stuck ball into a shared act of nerve. The product is not decoration; the shoe becomes the solve.
Mario Lathan wrote and edited the spot. I led character design, visual direction, creative strategy, and commercial direction, turning the script into a premium wheelchair-basketball world where a rogue shot sticks on the rim and one player sends his Chuck Taylor airborne to free it.
The direction depended on rules as much as a look: no athlete moves their legs or feet; faces remain consistent; and shoe continuity carries through the action. I built the visual system, directed the generated performances, and delivered the selected coverage, picture master, end cards, and sound-effects bed for Mario's final recut.
FILM CONCEPT VIDEO / 3 MINUTES 7 SECONDS
The Witness
A cinematic concept video created to establish the look, feeling, and sound of a future film told through the lived experience of a majestic tree.
I created The Witness as a concept video for a future film, giving its visual language, atmosphere, emotional tone, and sound a finished form before production. The film's narrative will unfold from the perspective of a majestic tree and the lived experience it carries.
The video brings that vision into focus through story architecture, character and world design, scene generation, original music and effects, edit, color, and audio sweetening. It is cinematic proof of vision: a clear expression of the film's world and point of view before the full narrative is produced.
AI isn't a tool. It's a market.
AI handed everyone the same speed and the same polish. When execution gets that cheap, it stops being worth anything. What's left is a flood of competent, fast, forgettable work, and a market that can't tell anyone apart. In that market you're one of two things: differentiated, or prey.
Speed is table stakes now. Taste is the only moat left.
Original signal
Seeing something the pattern-matching machine can't, because it doesn't exist yet. You create it first.
Creative judgment
Anyone can generate a thousand options. Knowing which one is right, and why, is the skill that doesn't commoditize.
The human advantage
Speed levels everyone. Judgment compounds. The creators who win are the ones who decide, not the ones who produce fastest.
"Originality isn't about being different for the sake of it. It's about seeing something the pattern-matching machine can't see, because you have to create it first."
CHAPTER 8 / AI IN THE FIELD: THE BUILDERS BLUEPRINT
AI in the Field / Chapter 8
"The Apex Predator Is Here." When speed and polish become common, taste, originality, and production judgment become the moat.
Order signed copy
The Creative Source Code
A director's treatment for building original work in the age of AI: source library, taste filter, storyboard grid, quality gate.
Get the Source Code
PRODUCTION & CONSULTING
SelectivTaste LLC
Production and consulting for premium content, cinematic storytelling, and practical workflow systems built for brands, teams, and creators.
Visit SelectivTasteTasteAmplified
A publishing engine turning research, direction, generation, and review into a repeatable content workflow.
InquireThe counter-archive is the spine.
Original worlds, characters, and rewritten histories. Every visual authored, protected, and provenance-tracked.
The Black Wing Throne — a preview from the portfolio field.
Every visual is authored.
Authored, protected, and provenance-tracked: sealed derivatives, embedded rights metadata, originals never shipped.
FULL PORTFOLIOTaye Shuayb faces the camera, arms crossed, in warm studio light.
WORK WITH TAYE
Let's talk about your next project.
Whether you need an executive producer to get the work made, a visual director to give it a point of view, a creative strategist to sharpen the opportunity, or an AI production partner to build a smarter process, I bring more than two decades of experience to the work.
Tell me what you're building, what it needs to accomplish, and where you need support.