Meet James Dunovan of Los Angeles / OC

Today we’d like to introduce you to James Dunovan.

Hi James, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
As with anything worth doing, it’s been a hell of a long journey getting here. The details are less interesting than the big picture, but for the last sixteen years, the image I had for myself as a filmmaker has gone through arcs.

In college and my early years in the industry, editing was where it was at. Pulling all of these disparate pieces together, some exquisitely composed works of art, and some the kind of garbage you keep a secret lest people associate your name with it. Either way, the joy of putting the puzzle together justified the endless hours hunched over a laptop in a dark room, fans whirring with a render that was a bit too taxing for the computer.

That was my first arc.

The second was the post expansion. When the budget is stretched thin and the edit is the last link in the chain, then the color, VFX, and sound become an after thought for a lot of inexperienced producers. And when that happens, you get asked, “oh, can you do color too?” Those were the years that my focus expanded beyond editing and into those other branches of the post workflow, with a heavy focus on color and motion graphics. The skillset diversifies, and the long hours at the computer get longer.

The third arc felt like the first real departure from what I was doing before. Eight or nine years into my career, I found myself on set more and more. I had the rudimentary skills of one who had taken classes and been around a camera or two in my life, but it wasn’t until I was working alongside cinematographers and gaffers that I was taken by the craft. I had been coloring for years and I knew what I liked and didn’t like when it came to lighting, but once the tools were in my hands, everything clicked. Still, everyone’s first time lighting looks like an expressionistic mess, and mine was no different, but you settle into it and you figure it out.

That brings us to now.

This current arc I’m in feels like a blend of all that came before. With the state of the film industry now, everyone’s diversified to an absurd degree. I feel that way, I think most do. I don’t believe it’s a good thing, all this loss of specialization for the sake of generalism, but I do think it has helped me communicate better across departments. I find myself often in that producer role these days, having to negotiate the needs of one department or another in a production. Those arcs I’ve gone through have given me a solid enough foundation that I feel well equipped to talk shop with everyone now.

I’m comfortable in a way that I wasn’t when I was a young filmmaker. I feel now that no matter what needs to be done for the production, I can work through it. It’s given me an independence and freedom with everything I work on now, one where no skill barrier can get in the way of making films.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Is any road smooth? More and more, I’ve learned over the years that no one has a direct path in life. Even those rare few that do have it easy still lose out on something, whether that be the shared respect of others who have overcome obstacles, or simply the ability to solve those problems as they arise.

I’ve been on projects where money was stolen from the production, blowout arguments with producers and ADs, shoots where all the footage was lost before it got to the edit. Anything that could go wrong, has.

For me, the worst struggles have always been with big egos. I get a certain kind of giddiness when I feel that someone is unjustifiably trying to take advantage of me or someone else on a job. Admittedly, it’s not the healthiest, but there’s a perverse sense of righteous anger that comes out in response. Have I had multiple people threaten to sue me? Yes, but somehow, no one has actually done it. But I am also pretty good at keeping a paper trail.

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?
These days, I think most often I’m split between two worlds, production and post. In the production world, I specialize in lighting, and I’m known for putting together an entire setup quickly. Too many indie and low budget productions in my past to take a long time.

In post, it’s versatility. I’ve done offline and online editing, color grading, VFX, motion graphics, everything. I believe people view my work as clean and refined. I don’t do anything too flashy, not my style, but it’s always well done.

I’m most proud of working within a small team and still producing high end content. On our recent documentary, “Journeys”, on which I was a producer and cinematographer, our team was able to pull together a beautiful doc feature with a team on set of usually two to four crew members, and yet the whole film looks like a psychedelic dream because of our dedication to the craft.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
He would absolutely love it for me to call him my mentor, and so, just this once, I’d say that my biggest mentor has been Giovani Hidalgo. There’s no one else I know who puts in the work like Gio, he just gets things done. I learned that mindset from him, that even if no one else is pulling their weight, we can still get it done. And Gio has an uncanny knack at being connected with everyone, something I myself am not great at. We’ve become a complimentary team in that way, where he can thrive at putting projects together, and I can bring my more technical mindset to refining them and making sure the quality is top notch.

My closest collaborator now would have to be Chris Cramer, a director, producer, and cinematographer that I had the pleasure of knowing first before working with him on a professional level. There’s no one else that I have such an easy shorthand with on set. No matter what role each of us is in, we naturally problem solve in the same way and work off of what the other is doing in perfect sync.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.honorarts.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/james.dunovan/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giantcontent