Today we’d like to introduce you to Javier Dampierre.
Javier, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Every single time I listen to Steve Job’s speech ‘Connecting the dots’ at Stanford University in 2005, I can’t avoid thinking that everything I’ve done in my eclectic life have driven me inevitably to films.
Being an introverted kid, at the age of eight, my mother caught me in my room playing Beatles songs -chords and melodies, with a crappy PT-80 keyboard.
– Who taught you that? asked a bit astonished.
– Nobody- I answered.
– Would you like to study music?
I shrugged a half-voice “why not?”, and there it began my music career. But being good at maths and physics at high school, and enjoying that so much, I didn’t want to lose the chance to study something related to that. So I combined my Piano and Composition Degree with my Image and Sound Engineering degree, somehow connected with music. And there I started to link with the image world more than with the sound world.
While studying both careers, I started to hang every week with a group of friends, all writers, to share our writings, stories and poems, in the legendary “cafe Gijon” in Madrid, where the so called “Generation of ’27”, the greatest Spanish writers from the 20’s, used to get together. We were insolent enough to call ourselves “Generation of ’77”, all of us linked with a cynical and sarcastic sense of humor in our writings. And there I started to get passionate on writing and wrote my first super amateur screenplay.
During my Image and Sound studies I enrolled the university theater group and started acting and directing theater. And I went to different movie-clubs to watch films and dissect them for hours.
I started composing music for short films and documentaries, and I took a couple of film music courses, given by great film composers like Roque Baños. I thought that I wanted to do that for life. But my artistic inquisitiveness pushed me to direct a short film, written by one of the members our “Generation of ’77” gang and me. And I enjoyed directing the film even more than directing theater, so I realized that my real passion was actually making films, more than anything else.
The destiny wanted to put a scholarship on my path, and thanks to my father’s insistence -cause I thought I was not going to get it-, and thanks to that screenplay that I wrote with a friend, I got the scholarship. The Spanish Government paid me a whole year to study filmmaking in New York. During that time in the New York Film Academy, I started editing some short films. Soon enough, other students knew that there was a Spaniard that was good at editing and willing to edit their short films, so I built a decent reel. And there my editor’s career started.
At that point, I realized that everything I did before, all this “wasted” years, studying different things that were not my real passion, happened for a reason:
I was well versed in music, so I could talk the same language than the composer of my movie soundtracks; I knew a bit of acting, so I could communicate with actors and have the tools to direct them; I was an enthusiastic writer, and thanks to some courses and books I read, I learned how to write a proper screenplay; thanks to the Engineering, I was a tech-savvy related to cameras, lights, audio recording systems, etc. And thanks to a course I took in photography, I had enough knowledge to have a fluent communication with a cinematographer.
So I could “connect the dots” – as Steve Jobs said in that speech – that drove me to my real passion: film.
Some years after working in Spain as an editor, director, and writer (for me it’s almost the same thing but with different skills involved), I decided to move to Los Angeles to look for more and bigger opportunities. And after a couple of years struggling -and enjoying- here, I can proudly say that some of my dreams are being accomplished, namely:
– I’ve edited and supervise the postproduction of the film “Prescience”, starring Linda Gray and Eric Roberts, which got a distribution agreement by Indican Pictures and Lionsgate.
– I’ve edited a feature documentary for NBC, “The People’s Fighters” produced by Mike Tollin and the legendary producer Frank Marshall.
– I’ve edited trailers and promos for Amazon, Fox and Netflix TV Series.
– I’ve produced and directed a proof of concept-short psychological thriller called “Fifty”, starring Dey Young, an actress who’s been in big TV shows like CSI, Star Trek, The Mentalist, or films like Pretty Woman or Spaceballs.
– I’ve sold a screenplay to a production company, to be produced next year.
Even though I started my film career relatively late, and even though I was kind of punishing myself for that, and for “wasting” all this years… now, with a little bit of prospective, I can say that I don’t regret any decisions I made in my life because all this decisions drove me to where I am. And I’m happy where I am now, fighting for my dreams and enjoying every little step I made in my career.
Has it been a smooth road?
Moving out of your country, knowing nobody, is not a smooth road.
Language is for sure a big barrier at the beginning. You think you know a language until you go to live to another country. Sure, my English was good enough to have a conversation, to convey needs, and good enough to get around. But when you get together with a group of English speaking people, and they start talking in a slangy way, or they drop cultural references of TV shows or singers, or comedians or politicians you’ve never heard of, or expressions that have no translation to your language, or they make jokes about cliches from other cities or states you’ve never heard of neither… or when you take some courage and make a joke, and you realize that you were not fast enough to tell the joke and you are breaking the natural rhythm of the conversation, you start feeling a bit stupid, you get more quiet, and your self-esteem goes down at the speed of a rock falling from a seventh floor.
So it takes time to get your self-confidence back (with all the implications it has in your professional career) and to gain back your charisma and your true self. And even after four years here, with a much much better English, I still feel that I’m not 100% myself.
In my professional career, language is an issue as well. As a screenwriter is obvious. You learn to write properly with your own English and with all the tools (dictionaries, forums, and stuff) the web can offer you. But you always need of some native-speaking people to review what you write. I’ve been in many situations when an American friend reads my screenplay and he/she goes “it’s perfect! There are no English mistakes… buuuuuut… it feels a bit off, not sure why”.
As a director, looks like language is not a big deal, but actually it is as well. Directing has to do with leadership too, and when you can’t express yourself very good, or you take a big amount of time to give a specific and simple instruction that an English speaking director would convey with just one word, or you see yourself mumbling or stammering words. Sure, people understand that is a language thing, but still, you need to make an extra effort to show that you know what you are doing. But of course, you past work backs you up.
As an editor though, I never felt that language was a big issue.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’m a director, editor, and writer. But since I arrive to Los Angeles four years ago my editor’s career has grown more than directing or writing. I’ve been freelancing for different companies. I guess my biggest strengths as an editor are the sense of rhythm and pace that my music background gave me. Since I consider myself mainly a storyteller, and I do think that editing, directing and writing is part of the same -editing for me is to rewrite what the director already rewrote of what the writer wrote-, I think that these storytelling skills I have set me apart from others in a way. I’m a creative editor. I put all my passion and my creativity in every work I get involved. I’m not the kind of editor that does exactly what he’s been told. I always try to elevate the film I’m editing to a higher tread.
I do have a production company as well with which I’ve produced my own short films, being the last one a psychological thriller called “FIFTY” https://www.fiftythefilm.com/
It’s the first time I had the chance to direct such a great actress as Dey Young, who’s been in big tv shows like Star Trek, CSI, or The Politician, apart from being years ago part of Pretty Woman cast. And it’s the first time I produce something in Los Angeles, something I found both a headache and exciting, but for sure was a master to produce bigger things in the near future.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think nobody can predict where the industry is going in the next years. It’s changing every single day. Some people might see a pattern, but I just see entropy, chaos, and random turning points.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.javierdampierre.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/javierdampierre/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/javier.dampierre
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/javierdampierre
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
