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

Jared, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

Most of the biggest success stories come from people with family businesses. We are a mother and son family business and there is no one else I trust more than her. She raised me by herself and was the one who always had my back. I’ve known her my whole life and know her integrity and her brilliance on set and off. Some people think its weird because usually its more acceptable if its a father-son business or a mother -daughter business or even a father-daughter business. The dynamic is almost looked down upon sometimes because Im an adult male working with my momma. I think that mindset is small and you should be able to work with who you think is the best. My mom is an exceptional writer/director/accountant and leader who has a heart to help people. Our gifts go together and we have great success stories from our business.

Jared, 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 was always a creative phase shifter. I would get obsessed with something for a while and only want to do that. First it was a storm chaser, then it was a skateboarder, then it was rapper etc. I would go through these stints of time learning everything I could about my newest passion and inevitably I would eventually lose interest and move on.

When I got into the video production field it was out of desperation. My mom was tired of me screwing up my own life floating around directionless and said if your gonna live in my house your gonna have to go to church. I was young and stubborn but agreed to it and joined the churches media ministry. Quickly I begin to obsess with it and wanted to learn more and more about everything. My mom at the time was writing and directing the church plays so her creativity was always kinda reinforcing mine.

After she did 5 plays she said she would like to try doing a movie. I was just starting in video production and was nervous but passionate so I agreed. She got an email about a 6 day filmmaking boot camp in Arizona so on a whim we went. It was an interesting experience but what we took away from it was which camera to purchase.

I started saving up money to buy equipment and the new T2i Canon DSLR camera that I would shoot my first short film on which looking back was horrible. It was shot at the wrong frame rate, shutter speed and very grainy because the ISO was way too high. I didn’t know I needed extra lights to light the actors. I thought the moon and practical lighting was enough.

People liked it though or pretended to and it boosted my confidence in helping my mom make this movie of hers. We ended up taking 2 years to film it because the script was way too long and we only filmed on weekends because we all had full time jobs. The actors had to wear the same hair styles for 2 years and we got a crash course of filmmaking by messing up and reshooting things. It was a combination of faith, not knowing much about the business and being naive that actually determined us to finish it.

Once we finished it I was tasked to figure out how to actually edit it and bought Final Cut Pro X when it first came out. It was a struggle because there wasn’t online courses on FCPX editing and my computer processing power was not great. Sometimes when I made a change on the timeline the computer would take 5 minutes to render each time and freeze up.

When we finally wrapped everything up we had a premiere at the local theater and it sold out. The line was around the corner and out the door. Our church showed up and they brought their friends to watch this movie we’ve been making in the basement of the church for 2 years.

We made 2 more movies and I wanted to change direction. I told my mom what if we helped actors get acting reels but made them look professional like clips out of a movie. She was very apprehensive but knew once I made up my mind it was hard to stop me from falling off the cliff. I did a few projects with others and actors were always talking about how they couldn’t get clips of them acting back from the projects they worked on and if they did it took months or years. I thought it would be cool to make a service that could better serve their needs and give them what they want fast.

I rented a small space and tried the idea out. In the first six months we got 2 clients and lost money paying rent on a place we never used. After 6 months the people who owned the place we subleased from had to move so they broke contract with us and we ended up at a new place. When we got ourselves re-situated all of a sudden we got an influx of new clients. The idea was working and alot of actors were getting opportunities through our reels.

It was a great feeling seeing first timers as well and seasoned vets get work and go on to do gigs on network shows with actors we grew up watching.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source has been word of mouth. We do alot of marketing but most of the time when we ask how did you hear about us they say from so and so who did a reel with you.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding thing is learning more and more every time while being able to use our gifts to help others succeed.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.actorsreal2reel.com
• Instagram: real2reeldmv
• Facebook: Real2Reel
• Twitter: Real2ReelDmv
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWW9iTHUBIXveFjM0NeUwUw

Image Credits
Images By Real2Reel I own all these images