Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Jacob.
Hi Aaron, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Personally, I come from a sort of jarring, multi-faceted background. Both of my parents worked in the film music business, so I spent my formative years growing up in recording studios surrounded by some of the best producers, composers, and session players around. Naturally, music was some of the first artistic expression I experienced, and it’s something that’s still a part of my life now, even though I’ve taken some detours from it. What started it all was singing little demos for my dad who was and still is a composer for TV animation. That turned into a lovely little side career as a session singer for Disney shows like “Phineas and Ferb,” “Milo Murphy’s Law,” and “The Lion Guard.” It’s a fun thing I get to do every now and then that’s just pure joy. I split my time in high school between Musical Theatre and Film Club, eventually deciding to focus on the latter in college at NYU. Having grown up in The Valley, the harsh hustle and bustle of New York didn’t quite sit with me (which is the understatement of the century, but that’s a story for a day’s worth of time).
Transferring back to sunny California, I honed in what was the most gratifying part of filmmaking, screenwriting, at Chapman where I graduated and sailed right into working in animation production as a coordinator. I never lost sight of music, following in my parent’s footsteps as a composer. What started as a hobby grew into a decent side-hustle as I ended up composing the scores for my friend’s short films for the sole reason that I was more approachable than the music majors have studied film. Screenwriting and Composing grew parallel to each other, and as I continue to hone my craft as a professional writer, I never inhibit my chances of learning something new about making music. So when I was proposed the idea of this multi-creative outlet for 16-25-year-olds that would eventually become Debatable Productions, it felt right up my alley.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
New York was tough, and sometimes I think it was tougher than I often give it credit for. There’s nothing like living in the city, and it’s an experience I don’t think I’d ever trade away since it’s where I first started to mold my artistic voice. That being said, it was while I was there where I started to put a name to the anxiety and depression I had struggled with in one way or another my whole life, that was then aggravated in a city where I felt alone in a room full of people (and the polar vortex didn’t help either). Moving back to SoCal was the right move, but the psychological imbalances I discovered back east followed me into the sun, and it’s something I still struggle to overcome today. It often preys on my creative drive, which is what I dip into in order to keep myself from falling into those darker, weighted places. I’m most myself when I’m writing a script or composing a piece of music, and moreover, through Debatable, when I’m teaching those things to our kids. That being said, it isn’t a struggle that I can’t overcome. I’m learning new ways to cope with it every day. A lot of it has to do with discovering the bones of a news story or teaching myself a musical technique I didn’t know before. Those moments keep the engine running.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Outside of Debatable and my full-time job as a Production Coordinator at Bento Box Entertainment, a TV animation company, I split my free creative time between writing screenplays and composing music. Recently, I’ve been writing more because the opportunities I’ve been lucky enough to hop on have skewed towards that field. A few months ago, it was the complete opposite, where I was doing back-to-back short film scores. I wish I could say that I was a creative with a regimented process, but the truth is, it’s all over the place. There are times when I can get bubblingly excited to knock out a few pages of a script or restructure my orchestral template, and there are days where it just doesn’t happen. I’m working on that. But I will say that I’m most proud of my ability to find some glimmer of excitement in whatever I’m working on, even if it’s something that I didn’t initiate like writing on someone else’s story or scoring a film I had nothing to do with. It requires some digging, but doing the work to find a thread that tugs you into the project is important because it makes it not feel like work anymore.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Sometimes, you have to actively make an effort to remember why you love to do what you do. It may seem like a given, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the middle of a script or piece of music, or even when directing one of Debatable’s musicals, where I stop for a moment and think to myself, “Why did this matter to me?” That’s always there at the start — the initial inspiration to be creative, but sometimes you get stuck in the process and craft of making the thing and you forget why you decided to sit down and do it in the first place. I’ve been nearly done with screenplays when I had to force myself to take a step back and remember why this mattered to me.
Contact Info:
- Email: aaron@debatableproductions.org
- Website: www.debatableproductions.org; www.aarondjacob.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/aarondjacob
- Twitter: twitter.com/aarondjacob
