This will be a quick one, as there’s plenty about me on the site already, and there’s only so much I can talk about myself. But I’m Jack, I’m an independent filmmaker and this is my blog.
Without putting too fine a point on it, when you decide to try and become a filmmaker, you have really two choices. The first, and the most tried and true, is to go to film school. This isn’t usually done from a pure perspective of learning, however. Yes, film education is amazing and can be a lot of fun. But the primary reason to go – and usually to go in LA – is because the people you meet will become your first network of people in the industry.
The second way, which has gained popularity over the last 30 or so years, is to eschew film school entirely and just go and start making movies with whatever resources you have. Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan both went this route, and anyone can plainly see that it worked for them.
Being the contrarian that I am, I opted for something more like a middle path. At the time I decided to make the change, I was well into my second decade as a sports executive and fast approaching 40. I had neither the time, money, nor inclination to drop everything and do film school full time with the hopes of then getting a sub-minimum wage job afterward.
So, I took classes. Lots of them. I was lucky enough to have a job with a sports team that had very long offseasons (the tradeoff being incredibly intense seasons, but that’s another story). So I took a bunch of classes at a local community college to learn the hands-on basics of a lot of different aspects of visual storytelling. As a result, I learned graphic design, web design, video editing, television production, radio/sound, and a lot more over the course of about four years. I was also able to deploy these skills immediately in my job and in freelance capacities, so it was a win-win for everyone.
With these skills, I made my first short film, Patriots and Tyrants, which got into the Maryland International Film Festival. So I knew that not only did I want to continue, but I was pretty good at it too.
Over the next 10 years, I slowly transitioned out of sports and into filmmaking fulltime. I got three more certificates in writing and producing at UCLA. Then, last year, I made my first feature film while doing my Master’s online at Arizona State so I could teach.
It’s the latter point – teaching – that led me to create this website. I’ve always enjoyed mentoring people and teaching what I know, in any industry I’ve worked in. It’s also incredibly important – there are a lot of original voices out there who I think could benefit from what I’ve learned but may not have been lucky enough to have the time and flexibility to learn it.
So, over the next weeks, months, years, whatever, I’ll be posting stories about what I’ve done, mixed in with some ideas I’ve had and even some of my academic papers. Hopefully, my experiences can help someone out there make a great film one day, or at least learn to appreciate film a bit more. We’ll see.
Thanks for reading.