What You Should Know About Alien Invasion: Hudson Valley's Melissa Tittl
UFOs are fascinating phenomena to mankind. Of course, anything you can't positively identify in the sky technically counts as a UFO, but the presumed alien variety are the ones that get the most attention. From Roswell to a thousand identified hoaxes, UFOs have become a sort of entertainment to many, while others believe in them so wholeheartedly they're positive that extraterrestrial life has visited our planet. To take things to an almost "creepy" level, the United States government has been officially investigating unidentified aerial phenomena from the shadows, but according to The New York Times, those clandestine investigations have now moved to the light.
Now that the government can no longer hide the existence of unidentified happenings in the sky, the "shock doc" series on Discovery+ is latching hold of the excitement surrounding UFOs with "Alien Invasion: Hudson Valley" dropping on August 15. One of the investigators leading this documentary is Melissa Tittl, as Discovery+ notes, who has a knack for sniffing out the odd and conspiratorial. Here's what you should know about this investigator before catching the new documentary.
Melissa Tittl is as much a producer as a journalist
Even if you're not familiar with Melissa Tittl, there's a good chance you're familiar with her work. It doesn't matter if you like to read in your spare time or snuggle up on the couch and turn on the television because Tittl is a multi-talented individual who has created media in both realms. She's as much of a producer, if not more so, as she is an investigative journalist, though most of her journalism seems to fall into the realm of documentaries and docuseries.
According to the experience section of her LinkedIn profile, Tittl started working as an account executive for the NBC affiliated news station WMTV after earning a degree in mass communications, as well as TV and film, from the University of Wisconsin. When her stint at the news station was over, she began doing research for the Discovery Channel, a job that had her looking into historical shipwrecks and their location history for the show "Deep Sea Detectives." Before long, she scored her first major producer role on History's "The Universe" docuseries, as IMDb records.
Becoming a producer didn't stop Tittl's writing, though. She's written for shows such as "Deep Space" and "Ancient Civilizations" as well as worked in content-related roles for various companies.
She's currently involved with GAIA
Melissa Tittl's current work goes beyond "Alien Invasion: Hudson Valley." The producer-journalist, according to her personal website, has been working with GAIA since 2016. Streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime have been at the forefront of the industry for years now, but as we've seen recently, more services have been popping up to cash in on the media style's popularity. It's easy to see GAIA alongside all the newer, smaller streaming sites and think it's just like the others, but GAIA is pretty niche.
This streaming service doesn't offer a broad range of entertainment media that touches on every genre like the rest of them seem to do. It focuses on what its website says are "consciousness-expanding videos." At the moment, that includes over 8,000 videos. Some of them are documentaries, while others are instructional videos on meditation or yoga. Among their series, you'll notice there are a few that Tittl had personally written on in the past, again "Deep Space" and "Ancient Civilizations" are among them. It seems like her role as head of content and development at GAIA was almost fated by the media interests of her past.
Melissa Tittl is very into the odd
With her involvement on a streaming service that mainly promotes what many might consider "out there" topics, not to mention her producing role on the new documentary series investigating UFO sightings in the Hudson Valley, you may already assume Melissa Tittl has a thing for the oddities in life. According to her website bio, she has a personal goal "to push the envelope of thought" by creating entertaining media that causes people to think about things that would otherwise never cross their minds. That's probably why she's written specifically in the realms of history and science, though not solely. These are topics that inspire awe in viewers and get the gears turning in their reality-TV-filled heads, but some of the media she's worked on is in itself "odd."
You know that famous show with the dude who has the hair? Yeah, "Ancient Aliens," that's the one. Tittl, according to IMDb, was a producer on the show, you know, one that looks through history under the lens of "what if it was aliens who did all of this crazy historical stuff," which is entertaining, but odd to quite a few viewers. Especially those who study history. She also worked on "Escaping the Prophet," a docuseries about taking down an American polygamist cult, and "Hanger 1: The UFO Files," which looks through UFO conspiracies and evidence for alien existence. So, yeah, "Alien Invasion: Hudson Valley" isn't Tittl's first alien rodeo.
She writes graphic novels on the side
It's clear that producer and investigative journalist Melissa Tittl has eclectic interests within the field of media, ranging from television to film and all forms of writing. One that is rarely mentioned in detail if you read her bios across the web is her interest in writing graphic novels, which is a project listed on her personal website. So far, it seems that Tittl hasn't released many books in this realm, but she does have a comic book out on the market right now.
"Sky Pilot," Tittl's first comic, is a collaborative work between herself and artist Rodney Conley. It's unclear if this is a standalone comic book, but given that it was released in 2016 and no others have followed, there's a good chance it is. The subject of the story revolves around an alien who crash-landed on Earth during the Vietnam War and must now navigate life disguised as a human. The being has no memory of who she is or what her purpose is supposed to be. Unsurprisingly, this comic falls in line with the "odd" that Tittl has become well-known for producing.