Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Ray Smolik.
Hi Jeremy Ray, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in the country in Iowa, and I was an artist since I could hold a crayon. I started learning piano at the age of 4 and always loved everything creative. In my free time I’d often climb trees with my brothers or friends and come up with imaginative stories on why we were there, or which monsters we were battling. I learned how to draw by first tracing over characters in comics, or putting paper on the tv over a paused Disney movie to try and discover the magic formula of what made their character designs special. I wanted to draw eyes like the Disney artists, and used to have a hard time looking into people’s eyes because of how personal and unique eyes are. So I was a shy kid with strangers, and chatty as a talk show host with people I knew.
During school my shyness developed into stage-fright, and as we went around the room taking turns reading books I would scan ahead, find my first lines, practice them in my head… and then I’d freeze when it was my turn. It started happening every time. Suddenly I was terrified to be the center of attention even if only for a paragraph of reading, but back then it felt like I was on live TV in front of millions. I was much more comfortable drawing, painting, playing music, or making up stories with my Legos and building entire worlds in my head.
To say I overthought things as a kid would be an understatement, I wasn’t aware of the ADHD that was causing my mind to go a mile a minute, and constantly considering infinite possibilities and timelines would just paralyze me mentally. It’s handy when doing creative work, not so much when trying to be “normal” in a classroom haha! I had this thing where I pictured an 80 year old version of me hiding under my desk telling me to take chances and risks because if I didn’t, I would regret it when I was 80. This was me at 8 years old deciding I’d forever be a risk taker to ensure I’d die with no regrets, and to this day, I still keep my 80 year old self in mind.
My first attempt at acting came when I participated in the Christmas pageant and I had a few lines to recite. I had them memorized, no problem. But when I got on stage, stepped up to the front, and opened my mouth… nothing came out. It was like my voice was stolen from me. I pushed and nothing came out. Silence for a full minute. My face got hot, I started sweating, and as I experienced my first panic attack the director brought me the script. “Oh great…” I thought, “now I have no excuse, this is WORSE!” I looked out into the audience, and saw my dad was recording the whole thing. Something clicked in me, my fight or flight perhaps, but I chose to fight, and forced out the first few words. Then something amazing happened… the words just started to flow. The relief I felt relaxed me, yet all eyes on me gave me a rush of adrenaline, and I realized I LOVED it, the storytelling, entertaining people, it felt as natural as breathing. It was that moment that I realized two things: I had the acting bug, and fear is just a construct. It can’t hurt me. That realization plays into the rest of my story.
Throughout middle school and high school I got parts in every single play. I stayed after hours to study my lines or practice blocking, none of it felt like work. I felt more alive on stage than at home or when I was with my friends. I even got enough confidence at age 15 to enter the Fresh Faces of Iowa competition which landed me my first modeling agent. It was the same competition and the same agency Ashton Kutcher did a year prior. I did some fashion modeling, participated in runway shows, and had my modeling photos posted in the yearbook. By the end of high school I was known as an actor, model, and musician, since I played many musical instruments in our band, jazz band, and show choir that all went to state, as well as speech competitions where I received perfect scores, and nationals for choir where I had a solo.
After high school I immediately took up acting classes at Theater Cedar Rapids, but shortly after starting, my family moved to Wisconsin and I went with them. I decided to go to school in Tempe, AZ for a degree in Animation, thinking that would be a great career choice, making cartoons and becoming the next Walt Disney. I spent a few years at an art school, studying the history of animation, practicing founding principles of movement, learning editing, learning Maya (the 3D animation/modeling software used by Pixar at the time), practicing life-drawing (nude models and still life), stop-motion, and many other forms of art. It was a great experience because I never was required to take any core classes like math or social sciences, which my ADHD would’ve dreaded. I was in my creative element and did very well at that school.
I stayed in Arizona for a bit after I graduated, trying my hand at J.P. Morgan as a loan officer because it paid really well and I wanted to save up to move to Los Angeles. Within a year I had actually worked my way up to a senior level loan officer position and was able to approve $750,000 loans without a manager because my accuracy and people skills were very solid. I had some of the highest numbers in the country, however I was laid off a year later due to downsizing and, being 22 years old, they didn’t feel I needed to stay. I never fought it, I actually had an audition that I wanted to go to and ditched the last week of work haha! It was actually freeing, knowing that was not what I wanted to do, always trust your gut. So I continued to work at restaurants (being a waiter was my most common profession for over 10 years), auditioning for roles, and eventually I started working as a stand-in.
The first film I worked on as a stand-in was for Jake’s Corner, and when I got to meet Danny Trejo I realized how kind down to earth he was, and that demystified things for me. I drank up everything on set, I studied how the camera department worked, the grips, the production assistants, so much so that I actually, years later, snuck onto the set of The Kingdom and pretended to be a PA… but only for a couple hours and then I chickened out and left. But I loved being on set, I craved it. Creativity was alive, everyone was taking part in it, and the feeling of building a collective dream with others really inspired me. I went on to work on a few more films as an extra, including a full month on Take Me Home Tonight where I was a featured extra doing scenes with Chris Pratt, Anna Faris, Dan Fogler, and Topher Grace. All of the actors and crew were so welcoming to me, the big stars treated me like one of their own. I felt at home.
Some health and financial complications forced me to move back to Iowa right after I had won an essay contest for a full-ride scholarship to study acting with casting director Faith Hibbs-Clark, so I had to turn it down, which crushed my spirit. I had also left a very valuable connection with a big name director I met after a screening at a film festival in Phoenix who offered to get me started in LA, but I had to abandon that as well. I moved back to Iowa, back to square one. I had no money, no car, nothing but an animation degree and a few film credits as a stand-in and extra. But that didn’t stop me. I found a restaurant within walking distance of my parent’s house and worked as many shifts as they could give me for 6 months until I could afford a cheap used car. Once I had that, I contacted the two main casting directors in Iowa and asked about stand-in work. Luckily at that time Iowa had a 50% film tax incentive and big films were flooding the state.
I secured a job as stand-in and photo double for Ray Liotta. While working with him we chatted a lot about some shared network connections (i.e. the director I met in Phoenix directed a film with Ray) and he gave me a lot of advice. I went on to work back-to-back-to-back on films as seemingly the go-to stand-in due to my professional and respectful nature. I worked alongside Timothy Olyphant during the spring as his stand-in and photo double for the full filming of The Crazies, getting to know him and the other cast members Joe Anderson and Radha Mitchell, same thing on The Experiment with Adrien Brody, Clifton Collins Jr., Travis Fimmel, and Forrest Whitaker during the summer, and then on Janie Jones in the fall with Alessandro Nivola, Abigail Breslin, Brittany Snow, Elisabeth Shue, Joel David Moore, I mean the list goes on. So many talented people, all welcoming, all passionate about the craft, and after wrapping for the day I often got to hang out with them, play poker, have a few drinks, and talk shop. It was a dream come true, a second attempt at beginning my film career.
But then, scandal hit the Iowa Film Office and one of the productions that came into the state took advantage of the massive tax incentives. The film office was shut down, and suddenly everything came to a screeching halt. I spent a year lobbying with fellow Iowa filmmakers trying to get the film office back up and running but to no avail. During that time, I couldn’t wait, I needed to create. I was dating an actress at the time who didn’t have a lot on her demo reel, so I wrote a short film just for her and starring her, this was my first short film. It was great practice to go through the entire process, I taught myself how to write by reading books like Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, and Save the Cat, while using the knowledge I soaked up over the years as a stand-in to self-produce while directing for the first time. I definitely screwed up a lot of things, but I highly suggest everyone who is considering writing, or directing, or cinematography, or whatever… just do it, and don’t worry about it being great. Don’t overthink it. Find a story, plan it, shoot it, learn from it, and do another!
That said, during the hiatus of films I also headed a few 48-hour film competition teams (while still working as a waiter to stay afloat). My first year’s film didn’t win any awards, but my 2nd year’s entry did a little better and won “Best Use of Genre” for sticking exactly to our chosen genre, which our team chose “Family Film”, which was a challenge since I was a huge fan of more avant-garde filmmakers like David Lynch, Tim Burton, Lars von Trier, Richard Kelly, etc. but I also did love some more family-friendly filmmakers like John Hughes and Robert Zemeckis. However I was quickly realizing I needed to go to where the action was. I do love Iowa, and all the creative geniuses that live there. It’s an amazing community, I’d highly suggest anyone wanting to film in Iowa to do so. You won’t find a more accommodating community and driven creatives.
For example, I auditioned for and got the lead role in a sitcom that was produced in Iowa in partnership with one of the colleges that taught media production, so we had a full sitcom multicamera set with a 3-wall dorm room and the rest of the college for our on-location shoots. It was such a great experience to do a dozen or so episodes per season, and being the lead taught me responsibility about preparing and making sure I don’t drop lines when I had so many to memorize every week. It was called The Old College Try, written and directed by Nick Harris, and that gig really warmed me up to what it feels like to be a constant working actor and how much goes into it. While doing that I wrote and directed a couple other short films, but due to some fine print in the contract on one of them, I had unknowingly relinquished my control of the edit/final cut, and the film ended up being cut into something I didn’t recognize. That was my first taste of what happens sometimes with a director’s vision when producers get involved in the edit, and it was heartbreaking.
In 2012 I decided I needed to move to LA so I worked double-shifts as much as I could at a high-end French restaurant in Des Moines. I saved every penny I could, and drove a car that couldn’t drive uphill on the slightest 5-degree incline. Long story short, I struggled for a year but saved up about $3k to move to LA. I arrived in LA late 2012 with nothing but a dufflebag of clothes and a laptop. To me, that’s all I need to get started in a new city as I had done many times before on my own. I burned through that $3k pretty fast subletting a balcony as a “room” in an apartment for $600/month for a couple months while trying to find work as an actor. I got into a couple networking groups, worked as an extra on a few shows, but within 3 months I had burned through most of my money and needed work, realizing if I was going to stay out there I needed to look at other work and not just acting.
So I took a job at a restaurant, yet again, and just as I was finishing training and was able to take my own tables (when servers start making money, which I desperately needed), I got a response from an email I sent to a Line Producer I had met while working in Iowa, Joel Sadilek, and although he couldn’t hire me for a paid position as they were staffed up, he offered me an unpaid office production assistant position. My bank account told me not to take it, but my 80 year old self disagreed, so I quit the restaurant and started work in the production office, which was an AMAZING experience. I had been on sets, but this was the first time I got to experience the full pre-production stages in a production office. I talked to every department, everyone was willing to share their expertise, I learned about casting, scheduling, DOODs, stripboards, how to write call sheets, it was like a 1-month intensive film school, I had my hand in everything and I’m forever grateful to Joel for the opportunity.
Without a job and doing an unpaid internship I couldn’t afford my share of the apartment anymore, so I found couches to crash on in order to continue my internship. Then an opportunity came up where they were looking to hire someone for a paid position on the film set during shooting, but I didn’t qualify. So I figured out a workaround deal where they could hire me as a paid on-set production assistant, and I would do both jobs for the price of one. That deal got me my first PA credit, and like the films I worked on before, I soaked up all I could learn, this time from the ADs (assistant directors).
Over the course of 4 months I went from unpaid office PA intern all the way up to 1st AD (the boss on set) on a feature film where I was able to schedule everything to film the entire film in 8 days, with 7 on-location and 1 day for driving/moving scenes. There was no other AD on that set so I also did the work of a 2nd AD, prepping the call sheets as soon as I got home, I worked around 15-18 hours a day during that shoot. But I got it done, and that experience led to a short stint as an AD on multiple productions until August. So in my first 8 months working on the production-side I had racked up over a dozen commercial, music video, short film, feature film, and television credits. Then an opportunity came up that had me switch gears into post-production.
I was hired as a VFX artist and animator for a Miley Cyrus / Mike Will Made It lyric video, which were big at the time in 2013, and after completing that work the company, Waterproof Pictures, offered me additional work as an editor. Having had SOME experience editing my own stuff I saw this as another great learning experience to round out my first year in LA; first starting in PRE-PRODUCTION, moving into PRODUCTION, and now I could learn the ropes of a proper POST-PRODUCTION workflow. I worked on dozens of projects with them for big brands like all of the Wonderful Company’s brands, Hearst, Condé Nast, Warner Bros, Apple, Disney, etc., continuing to be their go-to VFX/animator and then editing when not working on graphics.
After a year with Waterproof Pictures, I started making suggestions for their shoots, things I noticed, some techniques I had learned from other films, and the owner Michael Guilbert did the same thing Joel had done for me: he let me try something I didn’t have prior experience doing, and I was trusted to be a camera operator on the shoots themselves. I was still working in post-production with them, but as time went on and we filmed more and more things, they gave me more opportunities and even let me be the Director of Photography on some of their shoots (the lead voice of camera/lighting), as well as VFX supervisor on more complex green screen shoots.
Another year passed and after enough trust was built up, they trusted me to start handling celebrity interviews with just myself and a skeleton crew. My first interview was with Jennifer Hudson who was so kind to me, even as I was struggling to secure her mic or do follow-up questions, her patience and warm conversational attitude removed another layer of fear I had about interviewing celebrities and finding the right balance between being a director and liaison with the brands. I worked for 4 years at Waterproof Pictures, and thanks to Michael’s trust and willingness to let me try on so many different hats, my reels were bursting at the seams with over 200 projects completed and I now had separate resumes as a VFX artist, editor, cinematographer/DoP, camera operator, director, co-producer, post coordinator, VFX supervisor, storyboard artist, and more. So I’m forever grateful for my time there and to Michael for giving a dreamer a chance to make dreams a reality. He even helped produce the filming of my first short film in LA, “Broken Letters” by letting me use his gear to get it made.
While working full-time at Waterproof over the years, finally being comfortable money-wise, I started to dip my toes back into acting. I studied improv at The Groundlings and at UCB, and then continued my education at UCB studying sketch comedy writing and character development. During that time I made a lot of actor friends in these classes and we occasionally banded together to create some comedy sketches. I wanted to make a sketch comedy series with the same group and call them “Shorties”, which I still have the vanity URL on YouTube for, but as with everything in LA people get other work and each group I built usually disbanded after 1-2 shoots. But this is something I’d love to come back to.
I decided in 2017 to venture out and start my own company, starting first with work as a freelancer. My first offer was from Buzzfeed where I was hired on as the Story Producer for the show Worth It. They were prepping it to possibly sell to a network and I had a solid plan to make some tweaks not just with production, but with the post-production workflow to streamline things and add that network quality to it. They decided to stick with their current format, and I stayed at Buzzfeed for a little bit helping out on the Ruining History series with creating graphical elements and animations for the hilarious reenactments directed by the very talented Shane Madej. Once that season was done, I started looking for additional work.
Pretty quickly I was snatched up by Condé Nast (Glamour, Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired, +many others), they had just opened up some LA offices and were hiring staff directly rather than go through external companies like they did back when I was at Waterproof Pictures. So I worked on one video, then another, and another, and soon I found myself overlapping projects, as one was finishing I was handling a new one. This is where I became somewhat “permalance” with them, I was still a freelancer but there was so much work available I just stayed on.
After my first year editing dozens of videos for them, I was always giving input on things I saw that might help improve things, and they brought me onto a video game development series for Ars Technica called “War Stories” to give it a fresh new take. With the amazingly collaborative director Sean Dacanay, and support from our producer S.I. Newhouse IV, we came up with a plan to extend the editing timeline to allow for extra sound design, intentional music themed to the episode, custom graphics that mimicked the game, and a documentary-esque structure I had picked up over the years. My thinking was that video games are worlds that these creators live in, so their interviews needed to live in the same world. The episode ended up breaking records for the brand on views and subscribers, and ended up being used globally by Condé Nast as an example of hitting every mark editorially. But to me it’s just an example of the magic born from true collaborative trust to make something unique. To this day I’m still creating videos for them but much more sporadically as I have other clients now, but I still continue to co-develop new pilots for new series that their brands are trying out, and I’ve made well over 100 episodes for them between 2018-2024.
In 2019 I was brought on to direct a 30-minute short film written by one of the first friends I made when I moved out here, Olivia Bello, and even though the budget was tight we got it done and didn’t go over budget. I spent most of the 2020 pandemic quarantine in my room solo-editing/mixing the film and completed it after the pandemic ended when I moved to a 2-bedroom apartment in my dream neighborhood in West Hollywood, purchased my childhood dream vehicle, a Jeep Wrangler, and got my dream dog, a Siberian husky named Loki. With plenty of work coming in to keep me not just afloat but able to invest, I started building up my home studio in my 2nd bedroom, building my own custom editing rig, buying photography backdrops, new lenses, a new camera, new lights, the works. I had the bare-bones to start my company.
I decided in my first year in LA if I’m not acting I still have to be part of the industry, to create, regardless of the position, and approach acting from the inside-out rather than stand outside and knock on the door, hoping you can slip in with the Uber Eats driver. So all while I was writing, filming, and editing projects over my first 10 years I never gave up acting. It simmered on the back burner via other short films and comedic sketches I wrote, directed, and acted in, doing the improv core track at The Groundlings and comedy classes at UCB. Once I hit my 10-year mark in LA, I finally felt I was working enough to approach acting again, this time with a main hustle to support it and get the training I needed. I started taking professional acting classes, first studying Misner at Playhouse West, and then enrolled in an acting school, The Beverly Hills Playhouse.
I learned a lot while studying there from 2022-2024, how to break down amazing scripts from legendary playwrights, and I performed 50 scenes in my first 8 months before being moved up to their intermediate class, where I put up another 50-ish scenes, each scene being 10-20 minutes in length. So I was averaging a new scene from a different play every week. I was driven and determined to improve my acting, and it did, culminating in my first understudy role in an adaption of Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. Understudies usually get a night to perform, but mine was the night after Thanksgiving, so all of the industry folks I invited (casting directors, agents, managers) were unavailable due to the holiday, and many friends were out of town. So I rented a 6k camera and filmed the whole thing so I could at least show my parents back in Iowa at Christmas, and they were shocked. Quite the difference from a boy who froze on stage for a 3-minute story, to a sustained lead performance in a 3-hour play. Just takes practice, even if it’s by yourself in your living room. If you don’t have a local acting school, record yourself and make small improvements every day.
That leads me to this year. Early 2025 I officially launched my company Rabid Artists LLC, and while continuing to take on editing and cinematography jobs, I’m wrapping up on the first feature film I was hired to edit. I also have multiple IPs that are being developed. One is a film I wrote the first draft around 2019, a major rewrite in 2022, and finalizing it this year, it was actually inspired from my short film “Broken Letters”, which I felt had a larger story to tell. It got the interest of a production company earlier this year, so I’m working on securing development funds to get everything put together. It’s projected to be extremely marketable, and the title is “They Call Me Jack”, it’s a dark haunting character-driven period piece about the origin of Jack the Ripper told in a sort of “magical realism” style. Interested investors can hit us up, we are development-ready and have a budget set.
I’m currently taking the short film Broken Letters through it’s first festival runs as I completely re-edited it this year and gave it a new musical score because the previous music just didn’t fit, and music is extremely important in an edit. In it’s first month it’s picking up a few awards and is serving as a perfect calling card / teaser for the feature. Whenever I have downtime from my paid gigs I’m working on my original IPs and on improving my acting through professional workshops, getting helpful notes from them with the goal of getting better with every single performance, even if it’s just slightly better.
The important thing is keeping in mind what I learned when I was young: fear is all in our heads. Imposter syndrome is a dreamer’s greatest enemy, because the reality is this is a beautiful industry that, yes, has some nefarious people, but the overwhelming majority are willing to help and bring up those who have limited experience. And like those who gave me a chance that opened up doors, I’m happy to finally be in the position to do the same and help others whenever I can.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely not a smooth road, but as they say, pressure makes diamonds!
Growing up the main struggles were overcoming my own shyness and not having a ton of opportunities to get into acting or filmmaking while living out in the country in Iowa during the 90s. Now it’s much easier with everyone having a starter film studio in their pocket, so you don’t need to live in LA to get started now. Just find your people, like-minded creatives, and start creating!
When I moved to Arizona it was hard being that far away from family, and money was always tight. I wasn’t able to get a credit card because when I turned 18 I got one and didn’t realize there were hidden fees. So my credit was silently destroyed before I even got to college, and I couldn’t get a car or a credit card or even a decent apartment. I was struggling to make enough at the restaurants in tips. There was a point where I was borderline homeless, I had a device on my wall that you had to pre-pay and load with credits in order to have power. And in Phoenix, that was very important in the summer. So I would load less than $5 at a time, sometimes only loading $1.50 in order to get my lights back on and charge my laptop and cool down my apartment for a little bit. I had a cat at the time and my biggest priority was keeping him fed and alive. I was digging in the couch for loose change, checking the same place dozens of times and occasionally getting excited when I found a nickel or a dime, or if I hit the jackpot, a quarter or two, so that I could afford to go buy individual packets of ramen. This is why I applied to work at J.P. Morgan when my degree was in animation… to survive. So I aced the interview somehow by cranking up the charm and confidence (acting on an empty stomach), and was able to start training the next week. That week of training I survived off of one tray of cornbread that I was sharing with my cat. My first paycheck was like finding an oasis in the desert, I was never so grateful in my life.
Just months before moving back to Iowa, I had bought a new car while working at J.P. Morgan, and just weeks later, I was laid off. Two months later my car had been towed for parking in the wrong spot, and the people who owned my title had fine print saying that if my car is impounded they could repossess it after something like 10 days. The impound was for 30, so there was nothing I could do, as I lost my car, and all the belonging inside of it. To top it off, the company tried saying I still owed them the full amount, around $10k, for the car, even though they took it back and “sold” it at an auction. It was a $9k car. Obviously I never paid that, and they eventually stopped asking because they scammed me and trying to legally demand money would bring up questions on their predatory lending practices to people with bad credit.
While in Iowa there were a lot of struggles, primarily being starting over from scratch and only being able to buy used beat up cars with money I made from tips. Downside to that is they break down a lot, and it’s just a never-ending loop of: can’t afford a new car so I get a junker, spend all my money just trying to keep it running, eventually it craps out, and then I can’t afford a new car so I get another junker. While in Iowa I did a few short films, including one that I had hired a producer to help me put together a crew of around 20, it was a nice big team and I was excited to have a somewhat known actor as my lead. However the fine-print said that the producer had 100% ownership of the film and I was for the most part kept out of the editing room, so the film I wrote and directed was eventually taken away from me and turned into something that I didn’t recognize. Not the editor’s fault, they would’ve made the film I wrote/shot if I was allowed to carry over my direction into post. So that was heartbreaking, and was one of the deciding factors for me to leave Iowa.
While in LA I also had money struggles on and off every other year, but especially that first year when I was crashing on couches and sending 350+ emails a week (my weekly goal) to production companies looking for PA/AD work. There was a point where I was waiting on an unemployment check in-between gigs and I survived 3-weeks off of what $11 that bought me: 5lbs of potatoes, garlic powder, butter, a loaf of bread, and a pack of bologna, all from the dollar store, so I ate sandwiches and mashed potatoes for 3 weeks, which was a walk in the park after what I experienced in Arizona for months. I had to swallow my pride and slept in my ex-girlfriend’s car during the day to recover from staying up all night at a Denny’s working on my correspondence and trying to work my way into the industry. There were even a few days where I slept inside my rented public storage locker and on the metro.
But these struggles made me aware of what it’s like for so many people who struggle with poverty, and somewhat what it’s like to be homeless. So I’m thankful for the experiences (now that they’re behind me), but at the same time, my heart now breaks even more every time I come across someone dealing with money struggles because I know what it feels like to be in the middle of that horror. I’m looking forward to the day when I can make a really huge difference and buy struggling families a new car, pay for rent/bills for a year, etc., as I’m sure anyone would. Until we can do that we’ve got to just do what we can when we can. To you a $20 might be a drink or two, but to others it could be a week’s worth of food.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I covered bits and pieces of this when I was blabbing about my life story so I’ll give a shorter version haha! I’m an editor and animator for well over a decade, creating over 300 videos culminating in well over 1 billion views for some of the biggest brands posting on YouTube. As such I work a lot from referrals now since my name gets tossed around often in the branded editorial space, and I’m so grateful every time there’s a new connection, and that’s what I’m probably the most well known for at this time.
As far as specialties, I cover the full spectrum from pre-production to post-production so I’m like a swiss army knife in that sense, but my primary specialty is STORYTELLING. Either through writing a script, directing a shoot, acting as a dynamic character, or editing everything together, Story always comes first, and there are always opportunities to add to story in every aspect. That’s why I love directing because it encompasses so many different things. I’m a lifelong musician, artist, photographer, and actor, and those skills translate between positions. I believe training as an actor does help you become a better editor, or director, or cinematographer, and same goes for any two professions. It’s why I love this industry, we all speak the same language, and when we’re all focused on STORY, and what can be done to enhance it via set design, camera movements, color grading, etc., should always be explored.
That’s what sets me apart from those working on these projects just for the paycheck. I put my entire heart into every project I take on, even if it’s a celebrity interview, I want to do more than just cut out the breaths and stumbles. There’s always a story to tell, a feeling to evoke, and opportunities to INNOVATE as long as your collaborators are equally daring enough to take that risk with you. It’s what makes directors like The Daniels an inspiration for me, dating back to their music video days. When they moved into features, they brought along that music video director mindset and used unique storytelling elements in a new way that made Swiss Army Man one of my favorite films up until their 2nd film Everything Everywhere All at Once.
One of the things I’m most proud of is my refusal to give up, and I encourage everyone around me to do the same. Giving up is easy, just like not exercising, not making friends, and going through life doing the bare minimum. But when an obstacle comes up, regardless of what it is, if what you want is on the other side of that obstacle there’s no better feeling than overcoming it and getting what you want. I came into this industry with no established friends or family members to give me a large starting credit, and many people in Iowa told me not to come out here, that the industry will eat me alive. I don’t push to succeed to prove people wrong, I feel like that’s an empty victory. I push for myself, I celebrate every small win, and I have stopped focusing on my failures as I’ve done in the past. So my personal growth is tied to not giving up, because I refuse to give up on myself either.
My goal is to bring my innovative spirit and willingness to collaborate to EVERY project, and make that energy infectious to the entire team. That’s why I named my company “Rabid Artists”, because a passion for creativity and innovation is infectious. I’m very proud of being able to avoid turning into the “my way or the highway” type of director who can’t see their own shortcomings, and they often never improve. They make the same content, which maybe that’s fine for them. But I want every single project to be better than the previous one, and I know that the number one way to achieve that is to surround yourself with people more talented than yourself, and trust their expertise. If EVERYONE on a project has that same infectious passion to 1-up their previous project, there’s literally no way for the project to be less than spectacular.
What matters most to you?
What matters the most to me is helping people. Might be a cliché answer but it really does encompass every aspect of my life, because without it, what’s really the point?
In my professional career I see each of my projects helping people by telling stories, entertaining them, giving them some relief from the real world, creating empathy through perspectives different from ourselves, informing people, bringing important issues into the spotlight, etc. When it comes to my co-workers, I like to give opportunities to talented newcomers whenever I can, the same way I was helped early on. I want to help other creatives with their own careers by allowing collaboration on my projects in service to the greater story, which ends up helping EVERYONE involved. If I do a better job editing a scene, that makes the cinematographer, actors, director, cam ops, makeup/hair, props, etc. look better, so that’s another thing that pushes me to do my best no matter which position I am taking. Best thing I can contribute is my best effort.
In my personal life it’s very important for me to be there for my family and friends. So when my actor friends have live performances I always make an effort to come out and support them, promote their stuff on my socials, and offer help or advice if needed. I love helping friends brainstorm ideas for their scripts or when breaking down a character, and often get technical questions texted to me asking about editing in Avid, or Adobe, or Resolve (not so much now that Chat GPT is available haha).
In life in general, I want to leave the world better than how I found it, and always look for ways for me to have a net-positive impact on the world even if it’s just in the amount equivalent to one grain of sand on a beach. It would continue to help people after I’m gone, and obviously I’d love to have a larger impact, but impact is still impact regardless of the size. What we do every day and how we treat people will drop one more grain of sand on the scales of positive & negative, and if you add enough grains the scale will tip. With our world seemingly trending toward cruelty and posturing over empathy and humility, it’s tipping in the wrong direction. So even though my grain of sand won’t do much, it’s on the side I’d prefer to be on, so that makes me happy.
It’s just a simple way to check myself on in my daily interactions. I have a goal I try to hit every day: make someone else’s day. It’s pretty simple. Might just boil down to talking to the person bagging your groceries, complimenting the frames of their glasses, and thanking them by name. Leave positive grains wherever you go and remember your impact will never be lost in the sands of time. You matter forever. We’re all just time travelers on a one-way street.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rabidartists.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jrsmolik
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrsmolik
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/rabidartists
