We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leonidas Jaramillo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Leonidas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

After 19 years in the professional image making, I’ve seen and experienced quite a bit from my work in both film production and photography. Using both traditional techniques of filmmaking and vfx, as well as new techniques using AI as well as virtual production, Unreal Engine and LED walls, I’ve been able to navigate fully the myriad of past and new applications to do the main thing of telling the story that script needs but still within the confines of the purse strings of the producers. Although I consider my different disciplines to be mainstream in their own right, being able to do all of them, most times at the same time can be considered a rarity. I feel like this can be a platform of setting me apart.

Leonidas, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Well, it started out like most iconic stories of moving west from a small town in the American South. However the big difference is that I was born as a 1st Generation Filipino-American with dreams of Hollywood, I grew up in Longwood, FL a distant-distant suburb of Orlando. I worked on low budget movies and golf commercials. After a myriad of student films doing lighting and camera, I moved to LA when I was 30. I was a natural at lighting, and by 31, I was on photo lighting teams for some legendary photographers with the most well known talent. It was there I cut my teeth on what worked, and what didn’t on some of the most famous faces. Because of who some of these people were, time was always in short supply and so over 8 years of doing this, I figured out quickly what kind of face and body works with what kind of light, using the A-list as a proving ground. Eventually I moved back into motion picture and finished my first low budget feature (300K), 3 days early. Then I did a 2.2 million dollar movie, and again we wrapped 3 days early, and after that, I haven’t look back. It was full steam ahead until 2020. In the midst of the slowdown, I developed a more cohesive and intuitive way of lighting in a virtual environment in unreal, and translated those attributes into the physical light in dimensional space. Basically creating a seamless blend between unreal engine and the physical world within the camera. This would become known as virtual production. And although I wasn’t the first person to do it, I was among the first wave to take it to out of theory and into more practicum. Great lighting should be not noticed. It should be so natural and subtle that it builds on the story. Virtual Production is the same way, it should look like it isn’t there. And after 4 years of shooting within this methodology, I’ve a laundry list of clients and success that feature my work.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I moved here to work in film. And after less than a year of being here, I was told by my spouse at the time that she was pregnant. It was unplanned. And with a baby on the way, I gave up my union card and career as a 1st AC. I resulted to PA on photoshoots to earn money for my daughter. It was a humbling time. However that pivot, introduced me to Annie Liebovitz. She had need for lighting team on this huge job that she did with Vilmos Zsigmond for Vanity Fair and I introduced myself as a capable for lighting, and then I quickly transitioned into working with her team and her, and Vilmos on and off per project for the next 7 years. That was the turning point and the litmus test to advanced proficiency in lightng and it still serves me to this day even though I have long since left that world of photo.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice

I worked on one for Deadmau5, and I still don’t get it. So my view is very limited.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://leonidasjaramillo.com
• Instagram: @fistfulloffilm
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonidasjaramillo/
• Other: My wife’s company, and I’m a frequent contributor to: quarter-twenty.com

Image Credits

Leah Robson
Victor Ingles