We were lucky to catch up with Jesse Schroeder recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jesse, appreciate you joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew your brand.

Honestly, things started to scale up for me once I began to realize I needed to start working with a gaffer. Having not gone to film school, it took me a bit longer to realize I needed to collaborate with other creatives in order to improve the quality of my work. The first step of that involved working with someone who’s craft is dedicated to film lighting. This slowly evolved into working with bigger and bigger teams which only improved the quality of my work.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I work primarily as a cinematographer in the commercial film world, with a recent push into the narrative space.

I began pursuing the craft of film seriously around the age of 21, when I was a sophomore in college. However, I like to say that when I found film, I rediscovered it. What I mean is I was interested in filmmaking long before that time. As early as six years old, I remember making stop-motion lego movies as a kid, mostly Star Wars and Indiana Jones style action films, but at the time it didn’t occur to me that I wanted to go after it vocationally, It wasn’t until I picked up shooting photography in college did that spark reignite in me. Word got around campus that I had a camera, and different departments started asking if I can shoot videos for them. That lead to me working as a videographer at a summer camp that summer at 21, and that was the first time I watched a video I made be projected on a big screen. That blew my mind, and couldn’t wait to do it again.

I think what I’m most proud of is when a director says to me that how a scene played out in camera is exactly what they had in their head. That means so much to me, and means that we accomplished something truly special, and we executed the director’s vision for the film. I love it when all the pieces of lighting, performance, sound, color and music create an atmosphere and a tone that can only be achieved through film art.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

It took me a while to learn that creating an amazing looking LUT for monitoring sake isn’t going to improve your skills with lighting a scene. If I could go back, I would have just stuck with the manufacturer default and focused more on improving my skills using light to make a scene feel a certain way, instead of building a look that could be changed later.

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

Being able to create images that look and feel great, work with amazing people who are beyond qualified for their rolls, and to walk away with a finished product that everyone is happy with and proud to have worked on it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jesseschroeder.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessevisual/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessevisual/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-schroeder-3bb9288b/

Image Credits
Juanfer Leon Danielle Celaya Vasyl Broda Joel Didier