Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jesse Randall. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jesse, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
My journey as an independent filmmaker and the quest to get my work accepted into my dream film festival has taught me more about resilience than anything I’ve ever experienced. Most of my life, I was the only person who believed in myself. There are certainly more marginalized people than myself, but I was always swimming against the tide with the odds stacked against me: I didn’t finish college, I’ve lived below the poverty line most of my life, I didn’t have connections in the entertainment industry, or connections in New York or Los Angeles where the film industry is. I had nothing to show for myself after (almost) finishing city college in Wilmington, North Carolina except for 90-minutes worth of crappy short films and bad screenplays (they didn’t teach screenwriting at City College at the time). There was nothing to indicate that I was qualified to make it in the film industry, other than my belief in myself. I decided to risk it all and move to New York City without any resources, other than a little savings that would quickly deplete, as NYC is one of the most expensive cities in America. I tried to survive on minimum wage jobs while I took classes at HB Studios. Studying at HB studios was the first time in my life that people really encouraged my talent, but I still had to prove myself first. After studying at HB studios for a year, I decided it was time to embark on my first New York film project. Being queer-identifying my entire life, I was incredibly frustrated by the lack of quality stories in LGBTQIA+ media. I decided to solely focus on creating LGBTQIA+ content. While researching how to advance my career as a filmmaker without connections or a college degree, I figured the only route available was getting into the right film festivals. There’s a prominent LGBTQIA+ film festival that’s well known for launching the careers of queer filmmakers, and getting into this film festival became my mission.
My first film project was an ultra low budget 30-minute television pilot. I made the massive mistake of not using lav mics on the actors for a very stupid reason. So, the sound was ruined. I raised a little bit of money through an embarrassing kickstarter campaign, and invested the rest of the money for the production myself. It took forever to edit the pilot because I had to beg the sound guy for the audio files because I didn’t get them when we wrapped, another massive mistake. I realized it would be best to produce a shorter, low-budget, film project with a quicker turnaround. One of my classmates at HB Studios was a very talented actor who was interested in writing a short film they could also star in for their reel. We paired up to produce a project together. I helped them develop the budget, but decided not to charge the actor for producing, re-writing, directing, and editing the project because we were “friends” at the time. Everything was going well, until the day of the shoot when they arrived sick and struggled to perform. We wound up getting decent footage, but editing was frustrating because they didn’t understand the process, and every time I sent a picture-locked cut to our sound editor, the actor wanted to make changes to the cut. I wound up getting into my first film festival with the project (but not my dream film festival), but I didn’t own any rights to the film. Tension grew between us because the actor tried to cut me out of the project, despite the massive amount of work I did for free. When I got my first distribution deal for my entire body of work years later, the actor didn’t want to license the film over to the distributor (even though they would get all the revenue since they solely owned the film rights) because “the opportunity would benefit [me] more than it benefited [them].” I applied the lessons learned from that experience to my next project in hopes of getting into my dream film festival. My next low budget short film turned out a little better and helped me get into a smaller LGBTQIA+ themed festival, but still not my dream film festival. I had a revelation the night before the screening that the film wouldn’t go as far as I’d hoped because it didn’t tell a complete story and it was too obvious the film was a proof of concept for a feature, the biggest mistake you can make developing a short film. Still, the experience helped me develop my skills as a producer and a filmmaker. After making two five-minute short films, I decided it was time to move on to a ten-minute short film. While researching a variety of queer film festivals, it seemed like my highest chances of getting a film festival home run was if I made a film about two attractive gay guys dealing with sexual themes, and decided to oblige. I spent a lot of time developing the project, but I didn’t have a lot of faith in the story. I just thought it would sell. While developing the film, one of the actors involved decided to focus on a different career path. I could feel his interest in the project waning, but I felt like it was too late to recast. The shoot was difficult as a result, but we made it through. Still, I knew I had my work cut out for me in the editing room. I knew the film looked good thanks to our incredible cinematographer, but the visuals were the extent of my faith in the project. Fortunately, I met an investor who wanted to fund another short film that I wanted to use as a proof of concept for a television series I hoped to develop, and I paused post-production on my “sellout” film. I was certain this project would be the project that got me into my dream film festival because the concept got such good feedback from a variety of people. The production was challenging because we were ambushed by a snowstorm in New York. The actors were also insistent on not rehearsing. Sufficient to say, the film didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, but it definitely helped me establish my visual style as a filmmaker more than anything I’d made so far. I was crushed that it didn’t get into my dream film festival. I thought, “well, if this project I had so much faith in didn’t go anywhere, what hope is there for this other turd I haven’t finished?” Though the “turd” didn’t get into my dream film festival either, it actually got into my first major film festival. It was a sign that I should continue pursuing filmmaking, and time to move to Los Angeles.
Upon moving to Los Angeles, I started brainstorming about my next project. Starting my life over again in a new state on the other side of the country with little resources was quite a challenge. There was quite an imbalance between expectations versus reality, and my first few years in Los Angeles were hell on earth. I thought that might be a great idea for a comedy. After deciding to go back to school to finally finish my degree, in hopes of not being poor the rest of my life, I developed a web series that was a social satire about starting over again later in life called The Safety Plan. I started writing The Safety Plan in Fall of 2016 and post-production wasn’t finished until Fall of 2019. I didn’t have the money to shoot it all at once. So, I shot the episodes in segments over the course of a year. The reactions of the people working on it and various people in my life were mixed, to say the least. Some people thought it had potential, others thought it was a terrible representation of the LGTBQIA+ community and there was no way the project was of decent quality because the budget was so low. The Safety Plan got into several big film festivals, including SeriesFest and NewFilmmakers Los Angeles. I thought it was a strong sign that I might finally get into my dream film festival. The admission notifications for my dream film festival kept getting pushed back. After two months of delays, I finally got the rejection letter for The Safety Plan from my dream film festival. I was devastated. Looking back, festivals weren’t really looking for content as salty as The Safety Plan during the middle of an unprecedented pandemic. Though, how could I have known that when I made it? I simply created something that felt true to my experience as a queer filmmaker. I felt like my career had met a dead end. Out of options, I contacted the executive director of New Filmmakers Los Angeles, Larry Laboe, for advice. Larry connected me to a LGBTQIA+ streaming platform called Revry TV, and encouraged them to license The Safety Plan. They politely responded, but I didn’t hear from them again for three months. I was at a crossroads I’d never been at before. I felt like I was wasting my life pursuing my goals as a filmmaker, and perhaps it was time to find another purpose. During this time, I was hired to produce, write, direct, and edit an industrial film for a shady company, who was severely underpaying and exploiting us (1099 gigs became illegal in the state of California in January 2020 for that reason). After the long, grueling production, the footage for the industrial film turned out well. It was the biggest project I had ever produced at the time. After the shoot, I decided that even though I might not make it as a narrative filmmaker, I’d continue pursuing my degree and a career in film, because that’s where I’m my best self and where I thrive. I swear on my life, after I mentally made that decision, Revry TV finally contacted me to not only acquire The Safety Plan on their streaming platform, but my entire body of work that I owned. It was a full-circle moment of validation I very much needed that my efforts were going to pay off. I’m forever indebted to NFMLA for this milestone and their continuous support of my career. NFMLA has been the most important thing to happen to my film career so far in my journey. After this victory, I pursued a new project that was a co-production with someone who was very new to producing and writing, but still very talented in their own right. I was certain that with my distribution deal for all my work, this would be the project that finally got me into my dream film festival. Not only did this nightmare project not get into my dream film festival, it was the biggest disaster of my entire career, and one of the most miserable experiences of my entire life. The person I made the massive mistake of going into business with ultimately tried to sabotage the project by publicly igniting a feud with me on social media because I decided not to share a director’s interview at the film festival we got into. The executive director of the film festival made clear at the orientation meeting that this interview was only for the director, since that was mostly the focus of their film festival to begin with. My co-producer was livid. Even though the film festival only wanted the director for the interview, I asked them if I could share it with my co-producer, and the film festival agreed to do so. I got fed up with my co-producer’s inconsiderate, selfish, behavior after I did the majority of the work on the project, and the co-producer became relentlessly competitive, trying to take credit for the entire project. I was ultimately concerned the interview would be a tension-filled mess due to the co-producer’s behavior, and decided to do it alone as the festival initially requested. Additionally, this monthly film festival was celebrating LGBQTIA+ filmmakers during pride month, and I’m the only queer-identifying person who worked on the project. I know this because my co-producer explicitly told me at the beginning of the project they were concerned about potential backlash being involved since they weren’t a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. By the time I got a distribution deal for this nightmare project after all the drama, I had no interest in promoting a project with someone who behaves this way, or has a podcast they use to burn bridges as a form of entertainment and bend the truth to suit their narrative. Thus, two years of my life were wasted. This experience made me realize that it was time to move on from independently producing low budget content to focusing on getting my first feature screenplay made. By this point, I’d accepted that it just wasn’t meant for me to get into my dream film festival.
While working on the nightmare project, I was approached by my former professors at Los Angeles City College to be a part of a new program that funds projects by current and prior students. I pitched them an idea for one of my dream projects about the homeless crisis in Los Angeles. I thought if the film turned out well, I could use it as a proof-of-concept to develop the project into a television series. This project was the first major production of a narrative film I wrote, directed, produced, and edited. It was also my first experience of developing a story with producers who have substantially more experience than I do. Despite the limited window of time we had to produce the film, the footage turned out well. Still, I wasn’t feeling very confident with myself following my nightmare project being such a disaster. I tried to keep my prior victories in mind, but I felt so numb from disappointment that I didn’t have high expectations. I was reluctant to spend money submitting the film to my dream film festival, seeing that I had six projects rejected by them. Considering this film would be my final project at this stage of my career, I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t submit it. In January, I came back from a great holiday vacation with my family after a turbulent year, ready to focus on finally finishing my degree. I was shocked to find that the film, Spare Change, was accepted into my dream film festival. Looking back, there was always a breadcrumb of hope for each project, and sometimes that breadcrumb was just enough to keep me going. I’m both a dreamer and a realist. The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. Though it often took me several attempts to learn the lessons I needed to, I could see slight progress at each try, and slight progress is still progress. I guess what I learned from my quest to get into my dream film festival is that my career didn’t start taking the shape I wanted until I decided to surrender to my circumstances. I believe it’s up to us to give our lives meaning. Once you give your life meaning, the circumstances of life will open up, if you want things for the right reasons. If you’re determined that one path is the only path you can take to get where you want to go, you’ll miss the amazing opportunities along the way that could ultimately lead you to where you wanted to go to begin with. While I’m extremely grateful to finally have my work featured in my dream film festival, what I learned is that I should never have banked my entire self worth as a filmmaker on getting into that one festival. I acquired over twenty distribution deals for my films without it. Part of the reason I got into my dream film festival was because I made something that was more closely aligned with their mission, but the other half of that equation is I finally stopped determining my self worth as a filmmaker on being accepted, which makes my acceptance a victory beyond my wildest dreams. As for resilience, there were many times I lost faith in myself because of all the setbacks I endured. Still, I knew I’d be overcome by permanent bitterness like so many people I knew if I didn’t finish what I started. If you truly love something for the right reasons, it’s worth enduring the setbacks and painful disappointments that are part of the growth process.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a queer filmmaker, writer, & producer who solely focuses on creating LGBTQIA+ content. My work has over twenty distribution deals, including Plex TV, Revry TV, Mometu, and more. My digital series, The Safety Plan, has the most distribution deals and my proudest achievement, but I’m very excited to share my latest film, Spare Change. Spare Change is a short film that explores the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. I plan to develop Spare Change into a television series as well. The homelessness crisis is a cause that is very close to my heart. It’s horrifying that our elected officials have allowed this crisis to spiral out of control like this because of greed and negligence. We can’t depend on our government to save us. It’s up to us to find a solution, and requires us to be compassionate and caring towards our unhoused neighbors. Spare Change premiered at Outfest Fusion in March 2023, and will screen at NewFilmmakers Los Angeles on June 17th. I’m also an ambassador for the Mometu College Film Festival. I’ve been really eager to get into the film festival world, and this is the perfect opportunity. I met the CEO of Mometu, Bryan Louzil, last summer when my films were licensed by the streaming platform. We immediately hit it off and are excited to work together. I finally went back to school to finish my screenwriting degree, and I know how important it is for first time directors to get their work seen by a larger audience. I’m also developing my first feature film as well!
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?
1. Being able to receive constructive criticism – I find this to be the biggest downfall of so many people, not just creatives. There’s a difference between someone saying “I hated your film because it sucked” and “I found the film to be a bit confusing”. The bigger the budgets get for your films, the more people you will have to answer to. No one is going to write you a blank check to make a feature however you want, and if they do, they don’t know how the film industry works and you’re in for some trouble. There’s definitely a time and a place for constructive criticism. The opening night of a film premiere isn’t the right place to give five pages of notes, and only give criticism if someone is asking for feedback. But it’s pivotal as a creator to be able to receive and incorporate appropriate feedback. If multiple people are saying something isn’t working, there’s a definite note there, and you should probably go back to the drawing board.
2. Never stop learning – I meet so many people who easily get set in their ways, and their work becomes stale quickly. I’ve heard numerous established people I admire say that when you’re working on something, don’t be the person in the room with the most information, even if it’s your idea. You want to surround yourself with people who improve your work. It’s not possible for one person to be good at everything. That doesn’t mean you should work with someone who thinks they’re better than everyone and is trying to take over your idea. But work with people that can help bring your idea to life and make it better by contributing their skills and knowledge.
3. Don’t cut corners – I made the mistake of working with someone that’s so desperate to get ahead, they were always rushing through their work, and I was constantly having to ask them to redo it, or redid it myself, because I realized it was a lost cause depending on them. It was the worst creative experience of my entire life. This person also continuously depended on me to make sure this project turned out well and then tried to take all the credit for it. In addition to this being deplorable behavior, it will also blow up in your face. No one can get away with this type of behavior forever, and then you’re even further behind than you were before because you didn’t actually learn the skills needed to progress your career. I’ve taken the long route to becoming a filmmaker because I didn’t graduate college the first time, but I was always producing films using the skills I had, even when they were limited. Though my early projects definitely didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, I was still gaining vital skills as a filmmaker to eventually make better films. I’ve gone to film school twice and studied writing and acting for almost three years at HB Studios with esteemed writers and actors. I’ve done the work and it’s finally paying off. DO THE WORK.
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
Learning to let go. I walked away from a project I invested two years of my life on, but it was worth it. Nothing discredits manipulative, deceitful, people like proving you don’t need them. As I was debating letting go of this project, my solo body of work got over a dozen new distribution deals and my latest project got into several festivals. It was a sign to let go. I’ve proven once and for all that the only name I’ve ever depended on to advance my career was my own. Letting go has allowed me to utilize the lessons I learned from this disaster into something constructive. I’ve grown so much by putting this project behind me. Additionally, accepting that it’s time to move on from this stage of my film career and letting go has resulted in amazing new opportunities for me. I spent this past spring working for my first major production company, and this summer I’m getting my first experience working with a major film studio in acquisitions and scripted development. Sometimes, letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jrvisionfilms.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jrvisionfilms/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-randall-b81b7018/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/jrvisionfilms?lang=en
Image Credits
Ivan Copelli Amari Dixon
