Meet Damon Jamal

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Damon Jamal a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Damon, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Working with musical artists circa 2007 I needed to create some visuals to help promote their work. This was back in the MySpace days.

The companies/people I found to create the video piece wanted way to much money for such a simple little 60 second promo so I decided to just buy a high quality camera and do it myself. Being a nerd and tech geek it seemed pretty straightforward to combine my creativity with software skills so after I figured out how to shoot and edit the piece, I put it online and not only did it promote the artist(s) but other artists wanted me to create something similar for them.

That led to me shooting musical documentaries, then music videos, commercials, short films, and now feature films. I created my job as a director and people were happy to pay me while I was on the job learning so I’m very blessed to be in this situation.

Now I get to create stories for a living and share them on screens with the world. Soon I would like to be in a position to help other up and coming or even would-be filmmaker do the same.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As a filmmaker I do a lot to create films, but it’s a little different each time. I’ve directed four feature films and each one has it’s own background story.

First is the creation of the story. which sometimes I’ve written. If I didn’t write it, I’ll usually do some rewrites to clean up things that may be a little off or enhance the narrative in some way. This part is a lot of fun.

After that I start gathering the key people that I’ll need to help shoot the film (actors, crew, etc.) while thinking real actual locations and figuring out a realistic shooting date. This is when the excitement starts to build as I begin to imagine how the scene will play out in real life with actors in the actual location. At this point I’m super excited to get going and this is probably the most positive time besides when the film actually comes out.

The production of the film always has highs and lows. Typically when it starts it feels like we’re never going to finish but once we get about a week of shooting done I start to believe it’s possible. The days are long (12-15 hours) and as a director when I finish shooting for the day I start planning the shoot for the next day so sleep is in short demand.

But eventually we wrap .. and I sleep without any alarm and it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

Then of course post production begins which is a wayyyy longer process (editing visuals, sound, etc.)

But the reward comes when the film is finally all the way complete and I can tell people the day that it’ll be coming to a TV near them and that’s really what it’s all about.

I create films that are entertaining but have important messages buried within so I love discussing my films and hearing what viewers got out of it. This part makes me smile just thinking about it.

And I’m in the exact time period right now as my film SURVIVAL just came out and I’m getting a lot of great responses both from people online that I’ve never met and from people in real life that finally get to see the film that took up the last few years of my life.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three areas of knowledge that were most impactful on my journey started with me entering the Oakland International Film Festival, my first.

Seeing an audience in an actual theater watching a movie that I had spent so much time working on was super gratifying and very educational in terms of being able to clearly see what resonated and didn’t resonate with people who didn’t know anything about my film.

The other area of knowledge that was impactful was working on all kinds of productions. I would shoot documentaries, music videos, commercials, interviews for the web… basically anything and everything. I was doing most of the work myself in the beginning and with no or little crew and it really teaches you how to be efficient and prepares you for the future when you do have a crew, you have a specific knowledge of each of those jobs because you’ve done them!

Another area of knowledge that was impactful was understanding the expectations of your client.
A small record company had paid me to do several music videos for their artist and after I showed them to the draft to the first one they essentially fired me.
I had created an animated video that fused with the live action but it had really big political overtones (it was an election year) and the record company was pissed. So they told me I was done and that particular job was a big deal to me so it kind of hurt my heart but it was an important lesson.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
The number one obstacle that I’m currently facing (and that most filmmakers face) is financing.

Everybody has cameras, and scripts, and lights and all these nice things but none of that matters unless you have the financing for a project. Obviously financing films is a risky business so convincing someone(s) to give you hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars has not been an easy task.

But the solution is to keep moving forward, making sure investors always get a return on their investment and creating quality films that people want to see.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
In Yo FACE Filmworks

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