Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Sanchez.
Jason, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I knew the exact moment when I figured out that film was my calling. The summer before junior year of high school, I begged my parents to help me afford a filmmaking summer camp at UCLA. I saw ‘video editing,’ ‘writing,’ and other film-related terms in the description that I only vaguely understood, so I figured it was the real deal. It turned out to be a lighting-fast crash course for short-form video and the program ended with us making a short film of our own. I remember that first film having something to do with muffins (don’t ask), and the whole flight home I was riding a high that I’d never experienced prior.
After compromising with my Gen-X Latino parents (who were understandably concerned about my job prospects post-college), I attended Boston University for Film & Television studies as well as Communications, in which I would hone in on advertising. It was at school I learned some essential pillars of filmmaking, but the most important thing I learned in Boston was the sort of people that I wanted to work with. Several years, two degrees, and a two-day road trip later, I had officially moved to LA.
My first job in the city was media planning and strategy for several clients like Honda Powersports and Trader Joe’s, but I eventually made my way to a different agency, where I now work as a digital media strategist for Warner Bros. Theatrical. The whole time, I was saving up and writing as much as I could. This all led up to the past few months, in which a whirlwind of events finally lined up for me to create my first project since moving out here. The first step? Launching my own production company. I then immediately started interviewing for executive producers on my first project, passing around the script and building my team until everything was in place for my short film. We just wrapped shooting the first weekend of December, and we’re currently in post-production!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Absolutely not. I’d like to insert a dad joke here and say it’s been a ‘rocky road.’ (I’ll be here all night, folks.) I realize moving out to LA is this iconic right of passage for aspiring artists, but the actual city of LA, the actual culture of Hollywood or the ‘industry’ moves with such a crushing indifference that it can quickly eat you alive if you aren’t careful. The first year saw a good chunk of friends that moved out here at the same time packing up and heading back home. I get it. The phrase ‘it’s not for everyone’ has a wicked sense of truth here. LA is not for everyone. It’s only for a select few.
As for the struggles of the heart, I don’t get too homesick, but I do miss the unmatched culture of my home city. Houston has this gritty undertone to it that cranks out a hard work ethic in everybody you meet. It’s in the food (Tex-Mex for life), it’s in the infectious music, the sports and all. It’s tough explaining to people that view the South as this single, monolithic experience.
One more thing: Cinema is a privileged art-form. It’s so frustrating when a top-level director gets interviewed and their advice to young filmmakers is, ‘you’ve got a camera in your pocket! Go record something.’ If you want to make a respectable, independent project in LA with the permits and union guidelines intact, the dollar signs will quickly rack up. I don’t say this to discourage anyone, but rather to emphasize the preparation that will be needed, especially from a funding perspective. Crowdfunding is of course always an option, but a word of caution that you can only squeeze your friends and family so many times for help. So if you go about that route, be sure to continuously expand your network so that you have more contacts for the next go around. And at the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with just shooting on your phone and pulling a bunch of friends together to make something – I’m just saying that the economics of the industry are so stacked against ground-level artists that it can be disheartening.
We’d love to hear more about your company.
The production company has just started and was launched to primarily fund this first project, Imaginary Friend, which is a short horror & mystery proof-of-concept. The film revolves around a Hispanic family experiencing supernatural disturbances, and it’s a great first example of the company’s mission statement. The core objective is to produce media created by and starring artists of color. What makes us different from the other similar-minded companies is the stories that will be sought. The company aims to increase representation on screen by steering away from expected stories of minorities. We’re steering away from tales of a Hispanic family trying to cross the brother for example. These are very relevant and necessary stories, but they are not the end-all-and-be-all of these incredible cultures and people.
We’re interested in seeing minority characters do things we’ve never witnessed on screen before. We’re interested in stories that are about plot and character development first, and yet the cast and crew just happen to be people of color. Imagine a story about a homicide detective hunting down a crazed serial killer, eventually bringing him/her down in a climactic and tense finale. Sounds like something anyone can enjoy, yes? It just so happens that the lead is a Native American woman and the crew is majority women and/or people of color. Even better, the story itself can pull from Native American mythology thanks to a writer or other team members that identify with the culture and can guide an authentic experience.
What were you like growing up?
Film has always had a special place in my heart. As a kid, my favorite holiday pastimes were movie marathons a la the James Bond marathon on SpikeTV. I didn’t truly understand the concept that a film was this tangible end product involving so many people until I first watched Casino Royale. This was the first film that had me genuinely interested in the behind-the-scenes and director commentary, etc. To this day, it remains one of my favorite films of all time, right alongside Terminator 2.
Another element that started fairly young was me realizing how much I enjoyed entertaining a room full of people, whether it was through music, comedy, etc., so I tried them all. I started recording music in the 7th grade with friends. If you scrub YouTube, you’ll be able to find a middle-school-aged Jason rapping about the toils of fame (I’m 100% sure I wrote a line about the ‘haters’ I did not have). While I didn’t do any theater in high school, I made up for it in college, where I ran with a sketch and improv troupe. This group became my unconditional family in Boston, and I’m forever grateful for the hilarious and tender memories- thank you, Callbacks! I even did stand-up comedy as early as 11th grade, sneaking into Houston open mics where they let me, as long as I didn’t go near the bar. I have a distinct memory of bombing one of my early sets that my statistics teacher attended to show support. It didn’t go well, but I hope he knows I appreciated his presence and nervous laughter.
I’ll leave you with this: Hosting has always been very important to me, and it’s why I think I can so comfortably fit into the role of a director. When you have guests over for a gathering, there’s inherently people-managing and a bit of group psychology if you know what to look for. I was able to sharpen these skills while working one of my first jobs in high school at a wedding venue, where I was essentially a Jack-of-All-Trades assistant. Jump forward to college, where my claim to fame was hosting ‘Taco Tuesdays.’ Every Tuesday over the summer, my roommates and I would host friends in our tiny Boston apartment for -you guessed it- tacos and good conversation. At some point, it got so popular that people spilled onto the street because the apartment was so cramped. I don’t know why people kept coming back! However, the story continues when I went abroad for a semester in Europe. I love meeting new people, so as a way to accelerate everyone’s meeting in the program and solve the problem of how much I missed Mexican food, I hosted a Taco Tuesday in South Kensington, London of all places. I shit you not, these events got so damn big that I got an email from the school to cease and desist. We didn’t. I love tacos.
Contact Info:
- Website:com
- Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/jasonsanchezhtx/?hl=en
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/jasonsanchezhtx?lang=en
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