Life & Work with Ian Jonassen of Lancaster

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ian Jonassen

Hi Ian, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started making movies when my sister and I made home movies about being ninjas with our dad. I grew up in Lancaster California, so when I was growing up and in high school, there wasn’t a lot of competition for being a filmmaker. I just kept making videos with friends until I graduated and ended up going to film school. My first two years were at College of the Canyons before I transferred to Emerson College, both of which kind of blew me out of the water with how many talented people there are out there, sort of big fish in a little pond going to being a little fish in a big ocean situation. Those experiences definitely made me a better filmmaker, working on a million short films with the talented people around me. More importantly, I became friends with those people, so now that I’m out of school I’ve been able to work on projects with these awesome artists to help me and we all contribute to something together. The last project we’ve put out is “Brain Rot”, a zombie short film where three unlucky concertgoers get trapped in a venue when a zombie breakout starts during a punk show. It’s definitely the project I’m most proud of and I couldn’t have done it without so many talented people sticking with me and putting their talents into it!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been a smooth road in some ways and bumpy in others. Smooth in the sense that I was never at any real risk, I could always afford film school and people have been supportive for the most part. In film school, I was always super competitive. I wanted my art to always somehow be better than other people’s (even though my philosophy now is that art can never inherently be better or worse than any other art), so it was rough to constantly compare myself to others. I eventually overcame that, in large part, by just becoming friends with all the people I was jealous of and realizing that they struggle with the same things I do, and that nobody has a godly gift to make everything they touch turn to gold. Attending school at Emerson College was rough for me too. I love what I learned there and the people I met, I wouldn’t take it back for a second, but the shift from SoCal to Boston hit me like a brick. Boston is a great city, but going from wonderful weather and sunshine around friends and family 24/7 to a dense East Coast city with all the people I love 3,000 miles away made everything feel very intense.
My biggest struggle now though is trying to balance a secure financial future while pursuing a career in filmmaking. I don’t think it’s a secret that most filmmakers don’t do it for the money, it’s tough and insanely scary to feel like you have to choose between being safe financially and pursuing your dreams. Pursurvearance overcomes all though, having a job that pays you isn’t going to be the death of you pursuing your dreams unless you allow it to be.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a filmmaker who specializes in writing and directing. I love seeing projects through from start to finish and consider it to be incredibly rewarding work. Although I enjoy taking on multiple roles in my projects (such as sound design and mixing), I’m learning to delegate more to prevent burnout, as I have a habit of taking on multiple roles that end up being difficult to juggle when I could get other artists in on the project and have them contribute what they’d like. The more I make films the more I realize that collaboration is what makes projects so strong and profound, so I look forward to collaborating with even bigger teams in the future. I am best known for creating thriller short films. My most recent project, “Brain Rot”, is super fun and, mashing the fun setting of a punk rock concert with a classic horror monster, zombies. I believe my ability to blend diverse and eye-catching concepts sets me apart as a filmmaker. In the case of “Brain Rot”, I combined stylized punk elements with grotesque zombies that give a fresh viewing experience despite budget constraints. A compelling concept and story can often outweigh the need for a large budget, which is great for the situation my collaborators and I are in right now.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
The piece of advice that I’d like to give to those just starting that I wish I knew is to figure out exactly who your audience is as soon as you can on any project. If you can identify who your audience will be, it helps you keep focus and gives you direction when you need it most. Like with my zombie movie, I want my audience to be zombie movie fans around my age who are also into the punk scene. It’s a really specific audience, but knowing that allows me to ask questions like “How can I best reach these people, what do they want to see that they haven’t seen before, how are they going to react if I go against traditional traits of a zombie movie.” For many of my first projects, I just wanted them to be good and appealing to everybody, but that’s a mistake. You can show a movie to someone and have them love it and show it to someone else and they hate it, so figure out who you want to love it and why, and keep them in mind when you’re making your choices.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ianjonassen.myportfolio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iej2000/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-jonassen-2287b1197/

Image Credits
Isaiah Vivero-Ha