We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jakin Cordova and Kaylee Johnson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jakin and Kaylee below.
Jakin, Kaylee, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
For us, it is To Die For, a four-episode web series about a hitman looking for love. The project explores love, friendship, loneliness, and the internet: all things relevant to our lives. We started working on it together about a year ago and it has been the largest production of both of our careers. The combined episodes are equivalent to a feature film, and it has been such a rewarding challenge to tackle as students working with the limited resources at our disposal. We collaborated with over sixty cast and crew members, and we cannot wait for everyone to see what we put together.
Jakin, Kaylee, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Kaylee:
As a sophomore in college, it is often challenging to produce projects while juggling coursework, but because of my passion and drive to never stop creating, I always manage to make it work. I started filmmaking at age twelve on my iPod touch with my nine-year-old brother as my actor. At the time, I really wanted to be a pediatric dentist and only saw filmmaking as a hobby. When I reached high school and had access to filmmaking classes, my obsession with creating short films began. Now, seven years after I made my first short film, I am the executive producer of a four-episode web series and have created over sixteen short films. This is crazy to think about, but I know my filmmaking journey has only just begun.
While I produce a lot of short films, over the years I have also grown a strong professional portfolio. I began as a volunteer production assistant (PA) on my first professional set, “In the Hanger”, where the producer liked me so much that she started hiring me for paid corporate shoots as a PA and camera operator. Through this connection, I was able to meet more film professionals who hired me on a fitness video for the brand Turbo Fit and a music video for Josh Henderson. In addition to these jobs, I have had vast experience in sports broadcasting; I worked at my high school’s football stadium, where I began as a shadow, then became a camera operator, and finally a show director. The experience from this job helped me to gain employment for the Allen Americans, a minor league hockey team. Now in college, as a way to continue making money, I am part of Bevo Video Productions, which hires people to film football, soccer, and volleyball games at the University of Texas at Austin.
I always try to challenge myself, learn from my mistakes, and take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way. I believe that these qualities have made me achieve so much as a nineteen-year-old thus far. Of all of the work in my career, I am most proud of To Die For as it has been my longest-running project yet. So far, this project has taken over a year to produce (4.5 months of writing, 1.5 months of casting, 3 months of filming, and 5 months of editing). Through this process, I’ve grown to be a better producer, gained several industry connections, and met some of my closest friends.
Jakin:
Although I had always been interested in art and movies throughout my life, I did not think much about filmmaking until the spring before my freshman year in college- after I had been accepted as a mechanical engineering student at the University of Texas. I initially thought that it would be a hobby, but as I grew more and more interested in filmmaking and started to make my own projects, it became clear that it was something more. However, as someone who wants to learn everything about everything, I decided to keep studying mechanical engineering but spend as much time as possible outside of my classes on filmmaking- which is exactly what I did.
I joined Texas Student Television, our student TV station, where I worked on multiple shows, quickly moving to directing and editing during my freshman year, then producing a show my sophomore year. I wrote my own original scripts on the side because I wanted more projects to direct, but as I wrote more, I began to find artistic expression in writing that I never had in other media. With screenwriting, I could explore things in myself and the world without having to write a philosophy paper about it (I also took philosophy classes. Like I said- learn everything about everything).
Now, after working on various projects, I found that I want to write and direct personal projects, but I also want to edit and color grade other people’s projects. I love each part of filmmaking differently, and I want to bring other creators’ visions to life as well as my own. Other than To Die For, some of my favorite work includes my photography, where I can practice composition, framing, and color grading, and “Solamente”, a short film from director Carolina Bayón where I was brought in to edit the short in a non-linear way, which was a great challenge.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Jakin:
Personally, the most difficult and rewarding aspect of filmmaking is writing. With writing, there are structures that you can follow, and there are certain “rules” and good practices, but there is no “correct” answer. You have to build a story and your imagination is the limit- which is great and also frustrating. However, if you do it correctly, you can express certain truths that cannot be expressed the same way in any other medium. With To Die For, I pulled from certain archetypes in my life, combined them with ideas I wanted to express, and somehow the writing evolved into a story. And even though the script has long been finished (and I was the one who wrote most of it), I keep realizing more ideas and concepts within it that I could not have articulated when I first wrote it.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Kaylee:
What drives my creative journey is my desire to tell stories. I always find myself meeting interesting people, hearing about people’s cool experiences, or learning about people’s culture and I immediately get inspired to make a film about it. While these stories are not my own, I find it important to tell the stories of others as I know they have the potential to be shared with a wider audience.
As the years go on, I’ve discovered that I want to tell stories that are unique and have a deep meaning. My most recent film, “Feeding Tube”, does just that: telling how the effects of an eating disorder can negatively affect a relationship. As a creative, I always strive to get a reaction out of my audience. Whether that be to make them laugh, cry, become anxious, stressed, etc; I always want the audience to be emotionally connected to the story. Through these audience reactions, I truly feel that I am doing my part as a filmmaker.
Contact Info:
- Website: jakincordova.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/todieforshow/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCAzXg4HcbU-U3ljRGXbRB_w
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@todieforshow