We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Austyn Jeffs. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Austyn below.
Austyn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
So I feel the most meaningful project I’ve worked on, is also the one that is still going, which is Heart of the City.
Heart of the City is a collection of short documentaries covering the entire history of Los Angeles. And that’s from before humans all the way to the present day. Los Angeles has been my home for three decades and I’ve always had a passion for exploring its lesser known quarters. I took all those off the beat places and eccentric histories I’d come across over the years and created this project. It will probably be the most personal thing I’ll ever work on.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Austyn Jeffs, I’m a writer/director that makes offbeat documentaries about LA history under the banner Heart of the City on YouTube.
Look I know that sounds like every other person on LA TikTok right now, but what my producer, Russell Ford, and I bring to the table that those dancing teens don’t is a cinematic quality and contemporary approach to history. History is often seen as dull because that’s how it’s always been presented. Or they just like throw in aliens. But we really strived to create a fresh take. There’s also like dick jokes.
What Heart of the City strives to capture is that intense variety of this beautiful place and show those more offbeat corners you might not know of LA.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Sometimes when you’re from a city, or lived in a city a long time, you can forget what an insane place it is. If you take a step back and look at LA: the diversity, geography, modernity, architecture, communities, food, art, money, and culture — There’s no other place on earth with its combined variety. There’s a reason wherever you are internationally people know what “California” is.
I want the series to remind people what a truly remarkable region Southern California is.
Like even during the years long process I’m still finding new mind-blowing places no one is really aware of. Like I’ve been living here over three decades and just learned SoCal has a freaking active ass volcano on the Salton Sea? Just there bubbling gases 24/7? Or like the third oldest living organism on earth is a tree in Riverside?
Also LA has the cliche “you can surf and ski in the same day” but I’m going to say active volcano + 13,000 year old tree is the better day trip.
Also we want to try Heart of the City with some other cities/regions and we just expanded from Los Angeles. We did a segment in Chicago that is out. We also have a segment coming out about the Paris of the Midwest: Milwaukee.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Oh god I’m so sorry this is going to be super, super pretentious… But… That’s not how I view it?
I think when you’re younger there’s motivations by reward, but once you’ve had a few successes and the quick pure dopamine rushes that come with those rewards… It gets kind of repetitive and you realize that’s not actually the thing driving you.
When you get to a certain point in your life, you look back and wonder your motivations and compulsions on having a creative career, and you realize… It was just kind of always there. At every age of my life, from now to when I was a child, I’ve just been creating stuff every single day. Whether it was models or music or photography, and in my adult life video, it’s just how your brain popped out wired and you’re just a person getting by with a weird abstract lens of the everyday world.
I’m realizing I should have just answered this question with a sufficient, “I get paid to follow my dreams!” And I apologize to everyone coming out of this answer rolling their eyes.
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