Filmmaker Bios

Jared Jones
Cinematographer
thedreadpiratejones@hotmail.com

Jared Jones was born in Portland, Maine on a chilly evening in November ’87, into a family wholly unaffiliated with the entertainment industry.

The first few years of his life couldn’t have been better. Raised in a charming, turn-of-the-century cabin in the state’s most affluent, ocean-side community, his imagination and wild curly hair could not be stopped. But, all good things come to an end, and soon he was enrolled in American public school.

Unchallenged by his teachers, Jared cultivated a love of art and literature from a young age. He dove into fiction, non-fiction, painting and science—anything to take his mind out of his insular, suburban surroundings. He spent most of his formative years in this way, a diehard escapist with no direction.

After a few semesters at Cape Elizabeth High School, just as the college dialogue was starting up all around him and his friends and classmates were frantically trying to predict the trajectory of their lives, Jared had a realization. “I’m going to be a filmmaker. I’ve wanted to make movies my whole life.”

And so he had. As long as he could remember, he was a visual storyteller. He had always distrusted words, feeling verbally short-changed—like everything he wanted to say was garbled up by a broken in-out machine in his mangled, shrunken left temporal lobe.

So he doodled and doodled, drew and drew. It was the only means of self-expression that served him, came out straight. When he wrote, things came out crooked.

Eventually, his visual affinity led him to take two life-changing classes. The first was an “independent study” elective that he and two friends had created as an excuse to shoot no-budget short films around town. Each month, they wrote, cast, shot and edited a short, learning a great deal about every aspect of filmmaking—start to finish—in the process. The second was a black-and-white photography class helmed by the brilliant, genuine Richard Rothlisberger. An erudite photographer, he enlightened Jared to the language of light and shadow, planting the seeds of a career in cinematography.

By the end of high school, Jared was all in. Although fully aware of what a life in showbusiness would mean—sleepless nights, stress, crippling uncertainty, solitude (LA is 3,100 miles away from Portland)—he knew it was something he must do. The choice to go to film school was as easy and natural as breathing. And the choice of which film school came just as readily. Through a serendipitous instance of six-degrees, Jared was invited to lunch by a student at Full Sail University, Julian Weinstein.

He was in town visiting family, coincidentally having grown up not half an hour away from Jared, in Old Orchard Beach. He told Jared that, from the sound of it, he didn’t really want to be a director (he was deluded then), but almost certainly a director of photography.

Incidentally, he said, Full Sail provided a more technical, hands-on approach than most other schools (perfect for an aspiring DoP), was located in sunny Florida, and offered a Bachelor of Science degree in two years flat.

Jared was sold. On everything.

He attended Full Sail University, and managed to land the role of cinematographer on every project he worked on. While on the set of his final, 35mm project, “Anthology of a Reincarnated, Reanimated Trollop”, he had another realization (as he watched the titular trollop get chainsaw-dismembered by a terrorist leader). He resolved, at that moment, to pursue work specifically in the creature/effects/horror genre—those special films with more blood and gore than the rest.

And it was so. (His current demo reel, found here http://www.vimeo.com/4191390, reflects that decision.)

Jared graduated Full Sail in August ’08, and promptly moved west.

Having lived in Los Angeles for the past year, he has been privileged enough to work with some of the best above and below-the-line talent in the industry.

His first collaboration with the blood-brokers at Infested Films was the instant-classic “The Morning After”, and he has been a regular ever since.

Currently, Jared is awaiting pre-production on his first feature film as a director of photography, “Varius Strut and the Philosophical Zombies”, a project which he is ferociously ebullient about.

Brains?

CREDITS:

Cinematographer:

Varius Strut and the Philosophical Zombies (2009) (pre-production)

Theodore (2009)

The Morning After (2009)

Anthology of a Reincarnated, Reanimated Trollop (2008)

Disappearing Act (2008)

Lighter than Air (2007)

Camera Operator:

Division 123 (2009) (post-production) B-Camera Operator

Lighter than Air (2007)