We were lucky to catch up with J.W. Cox recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, J.W. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

When it comes to being “successful” I think it comes down to three things.

1. Defining what success means to you.

2. Being willing to admit your faults.

3. surrounding yourself with people who are more talented than you.

Success to me is making a career doing what I love, and that is making films. Even if it means shooting weddings, corporate videos or commercials, I’m thrilled to get paid to be creative. When I set out in the world of filmmaking, I of course wanted to be a director like every young filmmaker. But I laid it out for myself that success, was defined as providing for my family. So that meant doing any video production work that paid.

The first big lesson after defining what success was for me, was learning to admit that I’m not the best filmmaker in the world. I set aside my ego, and started to recognize my strengths, but more importantly my weaknesses.

This led to number 3, surrounding myself with people more talented than me. Setting aside your ego and humbling yourself opens the door to learning from other creative people. I’ve surrounded myself with people like cinematographer Matthew Kennedy, sound designer Kerry Stephens, Producers like Chase Crawford and Erica Bock.

I want to be around people I think are talented, so that I can learn and soak in their knowledge and know how. It elevates my own projects just by being in the same league as them!

Combining these three things, I think you’re on the track for success.

J.W. , 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?

I started out creating videos in high school, and went on to Cincinnati State in college for an Audio and Video production degree. Right out of college I started making money shooting weddings and other projects.

But I think I’m most passionate about my pursuit in the world of filmmaking. I’ve had the opportunity to create some incredibly unique short films like Cincinnati’s 2022 Winterfilm winner “A Balanced Breakfast.” Our award winning dark comedy “Chocolate Milk” and even our upcoming short film exploring the world of a child star called “The Rise Of Elsie Matthews.”

In the last few years I’ve spent a lot of time working on my craft when it comes to directing, and I think I’ve finally found my voice as a filmmaker.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being a creative for me? It’s gotta be that it’s an outlet. I’m a person with a lot of internal anxiety, and emotions, and it all bottles up. I have all kinds of wandering thoughts in all kinds of realms, and most people would probably think I’m some kind of psychopath if I shared all of them. But I get to kind of play in a sandbox of world building, and explore the stories and scenarios that pop into my head.

That isn’t to say that I agree with everything that happens in my films, but I do enjoy exploring the human condition. I think there’s something beautiful about exploring humanity and all of it’s good aspects, but more importantly all of it’s faults.

As creatives, It’s our job to create the art for the non creatives to enjoy. People work to live, and they want to be entertained. That’s where we come in.

I think too often we see everyone around us as perfect, and I think it’s important for creatives to insert into stories that humanity is flawed, and that even our heroes are struggling just as much as we are!

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think it’s hard for non creative people to understand the journey of creatives. I don’t think there’s a failure to understand why someone wants to tell a story, paint a picture or write a song instead of working a normal job. It all sounds like a lot of fun right?

It’s always great to get paid to do something fun. But I think the biggest struggle for non creatives to understand, is that creativity is work.

It’s easy to enjoy a 90 minute film, that you watch one time, and walk away not understanding that a writer spent a year on the script, and that film crew worked on set for over a month filming it, and that a team of editors spent months finishing it.

It’s easy to listen to a song, and jam to it on the radio, and not realize the amount of hours it took to write it, the hours spent mixing and mastering it.

It’s easy to glance at a beautiful painting, and not take into account the number of hours this artist spent training over a lifetime to create it.

Non creatives get the luxury of consuming the product of a creative, and many assume we should all be doing it because we love it, and that we should be thrilled to just be noticed, and if we get paid it’s just a cherry on top.

And they’re right. We want to be noticed, and getting paid is the cherry on top. But they don’t realize that we spend a long long time creating, and many times we’re not getting paid till something blows up.

We all have projects we’ve poured massive amounts of hours into, that we lost money on.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.averagejoefilms.com
• Instagram: @Jwcoxofficial @AverageJoeFilms
• Facebook: AverageJoeFilms
• Twitter: JW__Cox
• Youtube: AverageJoefilms

Image Credits
Average Joe Films Main photo of me is by Nick Bowman