We recently connected with Jasmine Berber and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jasmine thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

You have to be willing to dedicate an exorbitant amount of time to understanding your craft and you have to spend almost as much time networking. Then you have to make the time to practice and implement what you’ve learned to be capable of troubleshooting. THEN you have to be willing to find the money to grow your business and be willing to live lean until that income starts flowing.

There’s a lot.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve been a martial artist my entire life and, for a short period, I competed in live muay thai tournaments. I was training 2-3x a day and following such a strict diet that I was essentially living like a professional fighter.

When COVID hit, the gyms closed, and my ability to train went out the window. But I also took it as an opportunity to try something I’ve always wanted to, Acting.

So I googled the best placed to find auditions, took my own headshot against a window with natural lighting, and submitted.

I found a lot of work because of my martial arts experience and ended up working on sets as a fight choreographer and action actor, and that’s what ultimately brought me to my now husband.

We started our own company, and a year later I left my full-time career as an engineer to pursue filmmaking. In the beginning, I didnt know anything besides martial arts, but I learned many different skills to be able to run a production.

As of today, I’ve worked as a HMUA, SFX artist, stylist, director, editor, and producer.

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

I’d say my journey as a filmmaker is evidence. Filmmaking is am extremely difficult field to thrive in, but between my husband and I, we’ve never let anything stop us.

We may have slowed down at some points to focus on health or finances, but film has always been our main focus, after eachother.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Expectations.

Growing up, I learned extreme people pleasing skills. But as I got older, that meant I developed expectations for outcomes of people and scenarios to be guaranteed if I continued being a people pleaser.

As a filmmaker, you cannot have those kinds of expectations. You have to take people and situations as they come as for what they are.

It was a very hard lesson for me to learn how to let go of my people pleasing tendencies, but it ultimately protected my peace, mental health, and relationships.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: @TheFilmEngineer
• Facebook: @jazzy.danielle7

Image Credits
Image of me holding the gun was taken by Colby Files. Everything else that’s not a selfie was Daniel Miller