We caught up with the brilliant and insightful J.I. Mardones a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, J.I. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.

Creating my own business was like starting from zero.

Since I graduated from college, in 2015, I was thinking about creating my own business. However, giving the first step was actually the worst and most difficult part of the process because I remember I had very high expectations about my future but at the same time I was very unclear and unrealistic about so many aspects yet. Besides, to find a good name for my business was an additional challenge.

From 2015 to 2019 I remember I tried to gave the first step twice or three times with no success and then, in 2020, Covid pandemic ruined all my plans for that year

But one day, during the last 2020 quarter, I remember I was investigating about 7Artisans lenses on Internet and I casually discovered an Ukrainian videographer’s YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/@ToJll) who made some of his videos using the same lens brand. In addition, Blade Runner 2049 was the movie that inspired me to work on my own creative style as camera operator during the pandemic.

I took a look to his work and I figured out he makes a lot of short videos with a cinematic style. So that Ukrainian youtuber became my main inspiration, not only to start my business, also to take the creative decisions involved in it. At the same time, I was in a moment of my life where I didn’t want to be type casted in any specific genre, style or topic, so I decided to start my business in March 2021, making short videos about… basically anything.

After that, I started to work on my own creative style and define much better my favorite topics as videographer. And in April 2022 I moved from Santiago de Chile to Austin TX to find new opportunities and consolidate my business “J.I.Mardones FILMS”.

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 studied at University of Chile’s Film & TV School. After graduating, from 2015 to 2020 I had different jobs related with BTL, internal marketing and corporate video so as you can see my business is the result of all the professional experience I gained in the previous years.

Currently you can find a lot of people offering videography services. Definitely it is not an easy competition, so when I started my business I asked myself “how can I make the difference to be noticed by potential clients?”.

At this point, I think it is also important to clarify the main differences between film and video:

1) When you make a feature or a short film you take more care about every aspect involved in the production: the story, the aesthetics, the image composition, the sound design, the background music, the atmosphere, etc., in order to create something unique. In video you can be more relaxed about it.

2) In a film production, it is very common to work in numerous crews, everyone is doing a specific role on set and you also must accomplish different stages to finish the movie. On the other hand, in a video production  you use to work in smaller crews and it is not a work environment as specialized as a film production and besides you also can do many things by yourself, you also can operate a more simple equipment and the deadlines are shorter.

So as you can see, I decided to take the best things of both worlds. I mean, to create videos that look like authentic theatrical movies (yeah! I am a widescreen obsessed!) but at the same time being simple and more efficient with my resources.

As videographer I can help you to position your idea, your project or your business creating a cinematic short video, from planning to post-production, and putting all my knowledge about screenwritting, camera operating, sound recording and editing to your service.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When you enter the film school you have great expectations about your future, I mean, you think you will manage a lot of resources, you will make your movies and being selected in the most important film festivals in the world easily, however, in time you will learn how difficult is to enter the film industry, find the resources to make your projects reality and to join a film crew you feel comfortable working with.

As many young professionals I also started my professional career in a McJob, earning a starvation wage and notreceiving any recognition to my work. And when I finally left that job I also realized how difficult is finding more opportunities when you haven’t built a solid network and you feel very inexperienced as professional yet.

In addition, and to be honest, videography was not my first option in the beginning.

As a college student I always avoided to work as director of photography because I felt I was a disaster operating the camera and managing lightning setups, so instead I used to prefer to work as location sound recordist in student projects. After graduating, I found my first job as video editor but not because I wanted to specialize in this area, actually because I didn’t find any other job that allows me to enter the film industry. And when I started my second job as videographer and editor in an engineering company, in 2018, I had to learn to loose the fear to operate a camera, but luckily the company trusted and encouraged me.

So as you can see, during my journey I have faced so many adversities and dissapointments. I perfectly could have given up and go back to college to study a more “traditional” career instead, but here I am ;)

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I use a lot YouTube and Instagram to promote my work as videographer, but I would like to talk more about Instagram because this is the social media I mostly use.

When I moved to Austin TX, in April 2022, I remember I had around 150 followers on Instagram but right now, one year later, I am about to reach 1,000 ones.

Moving from another country has been very challenging in all senses, but Instagram has been very useful to connect with new people and local businesses in Austin and, most important, to show my work and promote my services as videographer.

I also have followers from other cities in the USA and from other countries as well. That is also very important to mention because if you want to be a video creator you cannot limit yourself to create content only for your friends, family and the rest of the people living in the same city.

In Austin I have learned to be more active on social media and take advantage of their tools, I mean, now I use Instagram Stories a lot, in order to keep my followers interested in my work. I must admit I do not use to share too much images of myself working on set because… you know… I always try to be very concentrated on my work, Maybe someday, when I have more budget, I could hire a BTS Videographer to help me to create content for Instagram. But instead, I always try to share images about the equipment I am operating on set and I also use to take pictures of my laptop screen, so I can show my followers what project I am editing right now.

Besides, I created my own hashtag, #jimardonesfilms, and I also use the other ones related with the equipment I operate, the city where I live, the local film scene, and the kind of content I am creating (fashion, visual arts, music, corporate, local businesses, etc) in order to try to reach people and companies who also are familiarized with the same topics.

When I do not have any new project to show, because I am busy with other projects or because any other reason I use to share photos, videos, memes, fan arts, personal opinions, reflections basically any post related with the film industry or with my favorite movies on Instagram Stories. This is also an excuse to keep myself active on social media and continue reaching more accounts. At this point, you also have to understand that managing a business account is not the same as managing your personal profile, so you also have to be very responsible even when you want to share random stuffs with your audience.

So, as you can see, to manage an Instagram account is not as easy as it looks. On the other hand, I am not the kind of person who always check the analytics, the graphics, the reached accounts and all that boring stuff, in fact, if I had to give you some advice about how to position your idea or your business: just worry about doing your job.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jimardones.wixsite.com/films
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/jimardonesfilms
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/jimardones
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimardonesfilms
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@jimardonesfilms
• Other: https://tiktok.com/@jimardonesfilms

Image Credits
All the images provided for this interview belong to J.I. Mardones (the personal photo and the additional 8 ones, showing his equipment and some screenshots of his most recent video projects)