August was born on June 22, 2000, to an American mother and a Canadian father. Growing up in Toronto's East York neighbourhood, he was aware of his dual identity from a young age due to the alternating Christmasses he spent with his relatives on the East and West coasts of the United States. He was an active member of his local Scout troop until high school, when he began to take a greater interest in film. During adolescence and university, August completed several video projects, mostly for school assignments. In 2018, he was a layout editor for his high school's yearbook team.
In 2018, he started attending the University of Guelph, majoring in Computer Science. Soon realising he was more interested in and better suited to the humanities, August changed majors, graduating in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts - History (Hons.). As a history student, he was a co-editor for the 2021 issue of "Footnotes: The University of Guelph's Undergraduate Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Social Change" and had a paper published. For his academic achievements he was awarded both the Marion McKenzie Scholarships for Outstanding Achievement in History and the W.S. Reid Undergraduate Thesis Prize. He worked for several of his professors as a summer research assistant and transcriptionist, but his most notable position was as Webmaster for the Rural Diary Archive under Dr. Catharine Wilson. This work endeared him to primary sources and the value of archives, and in 2023 he applied for a Master of Information in Library and Information Science at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information.
August studied at the University of Toronto from 2023 to 2025, graduating in June 2025. He was hired as a TALint student intern at the UofT Media Commons Archives, making connections which helped him apply to study at the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, New York, to which he was accepted in April 2025. He also founded Film Freaks Club UofT, a student organization which hosts weekly film screenings and events, in October 2024.
August had long been interested in photography, but in summer 2024 - inspired by his work at the Media Commons Archives - he begin learning to shoot film photography. Though this did not extend far beyond that summer, the experience familiarized him with the fundamentals of photographic technique; in early 2025, he purchased a digital camera from a friend. When asked, he says he will keep it as a hobby for life.