We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jordan Roman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jordan below.
Jordan, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
The one thing that drives me more than anything on this creative journey is the will to overcome hardship. Put another way, the resolve to face difficulties and conquer them anyway.
I learned early on that a career in filmmaking is an incredibly arduous path and one littered with obstacles and barriers to prevent you from creating at the caliber you aspire to.
As I’ve made films throughout my time in LA, what I’ve learned is that any problem has a solution, it’s just about how much you care to solve it. Filmmaking is all about problem solving and upon every completion of a project, it inspires a confidence within you that compels you to continue seeking out the goals that scare you. In a career that’s built on risk, I’ve found that embracing it and seeking it out will lead to an exponentially higher rate of growth. Without risk there is no growth and without growth there’s no reward.
In many ways, my filmmaking career has acted as a mirror to my personal life that runs parallel, and the confidence and overcoming of adversity within my career has elegantly translated into the same desire to overcome the hardship within my own life.
In this way, I think my driving mission has informed and enhanced my life in the most holistic sense.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Hi! I’m Jordan Roman and I’m a film writer, director and producer. I originally hail from Colorado Springs, Colorado and after completing my film degree at Elon University in North Carolina, I moved to LA to pursue feature film directing, which was always my passion since high school.
As a high schooler, I took a video class that transformed my life and rooted a deep love for filmmaking and the production process and every facet of it. I used to write, direct and act in comedy sketches that I shot with my friends and this is how I learned how to shoot and edit in the first place. After making a short neo-noir film that I made in my hometown of Colorado Springs, using all of my friends as actors and crew, I quickly realized that the communal aspect of filmmaking was something I loved and having the end product that I could watch with everyone was the most validating component of the work.
Since moving to Los Angeles eight years ago, I have written and directed a wide variety of short films, music videos and spec commercials, but have always found myself at home directing dramas and horror films. The last eight years have been the best training ground in terms of scaling up in the complexity of the shoots and ambition of visual ideas and learning the craft of filmmaking from every angle.
I’m the most proud of my short film Cuddle Buddies, a short I wrote, directed, edited and produced, about a single mother who works as a professional cuddler for a living. The amount I learned making this short was more than I could ever articulate and by far the most challenging thing I have ever completed. As a result I’m incredibly proud of how it turned out, but even more proud of the discussion it has generated when I have screened it at festivals and locally around Los Angeles. I’m now developing Cuddle Buddies as a feature film, which is set to be my feature debut as a writer and director and I couldn’t be more excited to continue to tell this story. The conversation around human touch, vulnerability and intimacy, or the lack thereof, is one that I feel is absolutely essential and is a narrative that is uniquely human.
I feel that exploring the human condition through the lens of vulnerability or it’s absence is what sets my work apart and is often the focus of the themes I’m continuously exploring in my own life, but through all of my work in turn. Part of what makes this work so exciting to me is that I genuinely love people and making films is my way of meeting these new characters in ways I might not otherwise get to. Getting to meeting new crew, actors and collaborators is also one of the most rewarding aspects of filmmaking.
If there is anything that I want people to know about me as an artist and as a person, it is that in everything I do I truly aim to be genuine.
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?
I believe the three most crucial areas of knowledge for my journey have been: 1. People Skills. 2. Endless Learning 3. Persistence.
I truly believe these three skills are something that anyone can continue to improve on, despite your natural talent, education or experience level within a field.
1. People Skills: For a career in the entertainment industry, virtually every job I’ve ever achieved has come through the personal relationships I’ve developed throughout the years and in building a strong rapport with anyone that you come across. People want to hire people they like to be around and they also want to take chances and help people they believe are not only talented and have potential but also are good people who deserve it. My advice to someone starting out would be to push yourself to be social and go out. Meet as many people as you can and get comfortable introducing yourself and your interests, since you are ALWAYS pitching, whether it be for yourself for a job or an idea for a project, it’s something that will continually co-exist with this work.
2. Endless Learning: Many of the aspects of my craft I have learned have come from an endless desire to read, learn, observe and ask those who have more experience within specific roles. There’s no premium that you can put on learning firsthand by doing the task yourself and putting your hands on the equipment and learning mistakes by failing and doing. I’ve always believed failure is a much better teacher than success, so you have to be comfortable failing and taking risks, which inevitably leads to growth. I’ve found the quickest and most accessible way of learning is to read. Read industry trades, websites, tech publications and listen to business podcasts, study art and read great writing and even trades and books outside of your field. Reading has single-handedly given me a whole new world of information that has proven invaluable to be the most versatile and knowledgeable filmmaker I can, even when I think about the non-creative elements of how to successfully be creative.
3. Persistence: If there is anything working in film has taught me over the last 8 years, it is that this is an incredibly difficult and competitive industry and nothing will ever be handed to you. Every single opportunity and achievement has come through intense work, sacrifices and a stubborn dedication to finishing projects and making things happen. Sometimes you’re the only one pushing the boulder up the hill by yourself and it’s in those times you learn how strong your willpower and resilience is and the more you build it up and develop a stamina to get told no a thousand times and keep going, the better off you will be professionally but also mentally. I’d say to anyone starting out, gear up and get ready for a difficult journey, but a worthwhile one if you are willing to stick it out.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I am absolutely looking for executive producers, financiers, managers and production company execs who might be interested in realizing my feature film script Cuddle Buddies, an independent drama about the life and work of a professional cuddler.
Directing and writing the short film that the feature is based off, gave me an entirely new appreciation for the role of human touch in our world and how incredibly unique and valuable that human touch is.
I’m in the midst of pitching the film for financing to go into production so I am actively looking for any investors or companies that would be interested in helping me tell this incredibly unique and positively impactful story. To date, I still have never seen a feature film cover this work in depth with the years of research and participation from the cuddling community itself in the writing and development phase.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ominousentertainment.net
- Instagram: @director_joro
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanroman/
