Meet Jason Lee

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jason Lee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jason below.

Jason, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

I’ve chewed on this question every single day in the weeks since Bold Journey has reached out to me.
When you dig into it, it really is quite a loaded question– I don’t think any quality that anybody likes about themselves is a single-source trait. As I ruminated on this over the holidays, a number of distinct possibilities presented themselves– my ethnic and cultural background, my background in athletics, the nature of my personal upbringing, among other things.
I’ve ultimately decided that my work ethic boils down to a single philosophical lynchpin that encompasses and is informed by the aforementioned factors:
Inevitability.
Specifically, the inevitability of failure. The acceptance of the 100% likelihood of failure in some form at some point in time is an incredibly liberating realization– it freed me from the fear of failure that once held me, and so many others back from striving for full potential.
In the same vein, I attribute my work ethic to the knowledge that success is completely uncertain. Many artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs, some far more naturally gifted than their peers, fall short of their dreams due to some combination of circumstance, timing…and work ethic. Putting your head down and giving your dream all that you can possibly muster doesn’t even sniff a guarantee of success, but it certainly can’t hurt your chances.
Although I’m a filmmaker by trade and passion, there’s one specific memory from my childhood that I haven’t stopped thinking about in the almost 2 decades since–
A playoff matchup between the San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Phillies in which both pitchers threw nine shutout innings, after which the Giants won in extra innings after the starting pitchers were relieved. This game exists so strongly in my mind because it drove home the realization that you can do everything right, and as well as you possibly can, and still lose due to circumstances out of your control. So why not give it your all?
I’d also be remiss to leave out the fact that I am a first-generation American immigrant. Growing up in Hong Kong, witnessing how much my mother put into the possibility of a more opportune life in America, and seeing the sacrifices made to move us here, and recognizing how rare and fortunate life altering opportunities can be, definitely set a baseline for the ferocity with which her children attack opportunity.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a cinematographer and gaffer (set lighting technician).
My favorite way to describe why I love what I do, I refer to a graphic I saw as a teenager depicting a Venn diagram, with science in one circle, and art in the other. The word “wonder” sits in the overlap between these circles.
I love creating wonder. I love the simultaneous firing in both sides of my brain, as every project brings new puzzles to solve– how do I create this image with the tools and budget available to me, while working around the limitations of the location we are shooting at? How do I light this space to look beautiful and naturalistic (or dreamlike), while distributing electricity properly in order to not set this building on fire? How does the contrast in this image serve, or not serve the story we are trying to tell?
All of these, among others, are questions that I have to ask myself and find the answers to every time I step onto a set– and I think the best part about it is that it’s a team sport. The communication required to coordinate the creation of a moving image between multiple departments, as well as the crossover between art and technical practice really tickles my brain.
Moreover, I love that I get to see the fruits of my labor pretty immediately. You bust your chops to get the shot set up, and then you look at the monitor– boom, it’s there!
While I mostly work in the commercial realm for brands such as Nike, Gatorade, and Intel, my true passion is indie filmmaking, and the stories that motion pictures are able to tell in their purest form– as far removed from the profit motive as can be. To that end, I am building a production company with my wife and close friends we’ve named Studio Cinematica. While it is still in its beginning stages, look out for it! In the meantime, you can follow my work on Instagram at @johnny.cinematica

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

It’s one of my strongest beliefs that you can teach technical skills to just about anyone who wants to learn. The “hard” skills of being a cinematographer and/or gaffer are not the difficult parts, they are the fun parts. Anybody can learn to rig a light and meter exposure, or to run electrical distribution. Just as anybody, with sufficient practice, can grow into a competent camera operator.
The hard parts are the intangibles– skills that not everybody may have the exposure to, or the mentorship available to them to even learn about, much less develop. On my journey, I’d say the most important skills I’ve acquired and developed as a filmmaker are:
1. Communication
Communication is everything in filmmaking. In a field that often involves at least 30 people in a space working towards a single goal, the ability to communicate and coordinate specific tasks on a tight schedule is the difference between accomplishing your goals or not. People think of cinematography as an artistic and technical job foremost, but more than anything, it’s about managing people. As the de facto technical director of a given production, I’ve found that you need to not only have a vision, and a plan for accomplishing that vision, but most importantly, the ability to communicate that plan and tailor that communication for the specific personnel in the departments under your purview. In my opinion and experience, there is very little harm in being as hyper-specific as you can be with every single element of your plan, while also allowing room for questions. All other successful processes on set are begat by effective communication.
2. Consistency
The best part of a freelancer, many may argue, is not having a boss. I’d argue that it can also be the most difficult part. When you have the freedom to tell yourself “well I don’t HAVE to do this right now or today”, as many of us are prone to do, it can quickly lead to a slippery slope of overwhelm and an insurmountable-feeling mountain of tasks composed of many very accomplishable tasks. I’ve been asked by many new freelancers how I stay motivated, and I tell all of them that it’s not about motivation. Motivation strikes like inspiration, and is potent, but temporary. Consistency is a habit, and is sustained, and takes discipline, and takes you much farther. Personally, the functional key to consistency has been keeping everything in front of me in perspective through visualization and prioritization. I use an Eisenhower Matrix at the top of every week to break down my tasks– four quadrants where items are either relegated to “do now”, “do later”, “delegate”, or “delete”. Once I have that clear picture, it makes it much harder to have an excuse to procrastinate because I am overwhelmed. Philosophically, I think that consistency and discipline in your craft has to come from something within– whatever it is that your lizard brain feels like doing instead of what’s necessary to further your craft (my lizard brain REALLY wants to smoke weed and play video games all day), you have to love your craft more than that thing.
3. Coachability
There’s a quote from Stanislavski that I find to be quite profound–
“Love the art in yourself, and not yourself in the art.”
It helps to keep in perspective that art, especially filmmaking, cannot be about your ego. Not only because of the necessity of teamwork to accomplish the creation of a film, but because ego is the greatest killer to growth. The moment that you start to tell yourself that you know everything there is to know about your craft, you’re in trouble. I also find that if I’m the smartest person in the room, I’m in the wrong room. The greatest service I’ve done myself in this career is mustering the courage to surround myself with people who are intimidatingly more skilled and experienced than I am, and to be the greenest in the room at my craft. The amount of learning through not only sheer osmosis, but asking what could be categorized as stupid questions, has taken me much farther than going it alone. Your personal need to feel very good at something should not be trumped by your desire to be better– because you could always get better.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”.
Maybe it’s a cliche answer, but I picked it up when I was recovering from an opiate addiction in my early 20s, and found it to be incredibly eye-opening. Through the lens of modernized and digestible zen philosophy and funny anecdotes, Manson shares the essential message that we only have a limited amount of f*cks to give on any given day– and that’s the truth even if you don’t want it to be. We often end up feeling adrift, anxious, or unfocused because we have a way of giving our attention to things that are way beyond the realm of our control. Manson opines that the only things worth dedicating true mental strain to are the things in our control– worry over things out of our control is simply a fool’s errand.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @johnny.cinematica

Image Credits

Caleb Salvatori
Daniel Nim
Nate Miles
Sawyer Alcazar-Hagen
Kaleb Koelling