Meet Jonathan Pears

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Pears.

Hi Jonathan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in the UK and followed the engineering path out of school, which led me to work for a Formula 1 team as a Junior Engineer. I started wakeboarding with my head of department at the time and realized that he was doing this with some of the best wakeboarders in the UK. Nobody was documenting what they were doing, so without much rationality or planning, I bought a camera and started to shoot it all. Before too long, I had my own website for all the videos and started shooting in the US soon after when some of the videos had traveled across the Atlantic to some of the US athletes. Before too long I was shooting for all the brands and started to shoot outside the sport for commercials and TV. Eventually moving to the US back in 2008, and through friends in the action sports world, I started skydiving. The combination of skydiving, shooting for a living, and working with all these brands like Red Bull, allowed me to travel all over the world doing what I loved – from Mt Everest to the Arabian desert. To fast forward many chapters, I eventually got bought to LA by a studio post them seeing some work of mine, and from there took on a lot more commercial and narrative work. As of 2021 and 2022, I am more rooted in narrative, having just returned from my first major feature with Gerard Butler in Saudi Arabia.

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?
For the path I ended up on, I had to learn my craft at the same time as learning myself, at the same time as learning a new country, the culture, and the people within it. All that comes with a lot of setbacks and mistakes, always feeling a little behind the curve compared to my peers in the same profession. But uncertain paths often bare the most valuable lessons and experience, so within that I think I have been very lucky to have done what I have done. Whilst the bumps in the road have felt very, very destabilizing at times, we all have our rough times we have to endure, but to live in a western country and do what I do – means that I am a very lucky person indeed!

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?
I have always been interested in stories, or more precisely the ‘why’ behind how people have chosen to live their life or a choice they made, etc. What connects us all as humans just trying to figure it all out lies in these areas, within the why, and when you choose to explore it and not make assumptions, you realize just how connected we all are. So I try to focus my work in that direction, trying to peel back the layers and try to make sense of it all in a way that can be shared with others. That’s all films are for the most part, the good ones anyway, normal people dealing with exceptional circumstances, and within that reveals things about them they perhaps didn’t know themselves. So I love exploring the humanity in that and lean towards keeping things raw and un-manicured.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is tricky, as it suggests a certain destination has been arrived at. I think I am the most fulfilled when the audience responds to your work when you were able to elicit a reaction or make them think about something differently etc. When you can translate an emotion and feeling, even a point of view, through the screen, I think those moments would be considered a success.

Contact Info:

• Email: jon@Jonpears.com
• Website: www.Jonpears.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/jon.pears