We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeremy Gray. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeremy below.

Jeremy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

Maybe the biggest challenge in my filmmaking career since I’ve moved to Los Angeles has been delivering on a crowd-funded short film project that has been in the works for over four years. Long story short: my actor/filmmaker girlfriend Molly and I hatched up a short film idea way back when we first moved to LA in 2018. We took some time developing the idea, wrote a couple drafts of the script, then drove out to Joshua Tree, CA and shot an Indiegogo video asking friends and family to donate some money to our production budget. After a diligent campaign, we hit our fundraising goal and excitedly reported to our community that we couldn’t wait to shoot the movie and show everyone what we could do.

The first roadblock was that as the script drafts went on, our idea became less and less shootable for the budget which we had originally envisioned. The story involved a lot of characters, tons of dialogue and elaborate scenes, and a sci-fi time travel element that needed tons of screentime to really flesh out. The script just kept feeling not there, and we pushed shooting dates a handful of times over that first year and a half.

Then in 2019, I had two big family member health crises. It was a devastating time where I couldn’t think about much anything other than my family, let alone some fictional love triangle melodrama I had conceived for a short film. I sent an email to our movie donors explaining that personal issues had come up and that shooting had been delayed. It took a lot for me to write that email, but I felt I owed it to everyone who supported us.

While I was in the thick of that emotionally difficult year, I developed a passion for hobby that I’d had casually partaken in on-and-off — rock climbing. While I’d dabbled in the sport casually in the past, that year I started going outdoors every week to one of the dozens of crags in Southern California. It cleared my mind, gave me something to lose myself in, and gave me a relationship with nature and life that I’ll have with me forever.

In March 2020, the shtudown happened. At that point, it felt like the movie was resisting being made. I just kept rock climbing. Then some time in 2021, it occured to me: the movie needs to be about rock climbing. It made so much sense: no supernatural elements, just a couple characters, and a subject matter that was inherently dramatic without needing to add much. Molly and I recruited the help of some climber friends we’d made and we began pre-production on our new climbing movie idea. It took another 20 drafts of writing and dozens of hours of production meetings, but on the week before Christmas 2022, we successfully shot 2 out of 4 shooting days for the short film, with 2 more coming in
February.

Over 120 people donated to our initial fundraiser. There were times between then and now that I thought I’d have to return the money because this movie simply wasn’t happening. After all of that, sharing production stills over Christmas with our mailing list was a hugely gratifying experience and I can’t wait to show everybody what’s next.

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

After graduating film school in 2017, I moved to LA with my film school girlfriend Molly. At first I was doing a lot of work as an assitant on big sets. I drove production trucks, dressed sets, PA’d on various low-budget food shows. After a while I learned that assistant work didn’t leave me enough room in my week to work on my own craft. I bought a Nikon mirrorless camera and started doing videography, photography, and editing as a freelancer. I love taking photos at events, directing music videos, and bringing my camera kit out to indie shoots. A lot of times my work will align with my activist values, highlighting stories of people in the margins, and envisioning a world that works for everyone regardless of race, class, gender expression, class, or documentation status.

How did you build your audience on social media?

If you’re a photographer, it doesn’t make sense to ignore social media as a significant platform for your work. Just do the annoying thing of posting a photo every day and put the max number of hashtags in the caption. Yes it’s lame, yes it’s cheap, yes your followers are seeing a phone-screen sized version of a photo you’ve poured yourself into, but ultimately, utilizing instagram is opening your work up to a world that artists in previous generations couldn’t have dreamed of. The algorithm isn’t necessarily a force for good, but it’s a powerful force nonetheless.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I think every artist should be considerate of the worldview that they’re imparting. Mine starts with criticisms of power. I look at the history of art made by rich white men and I try to tell stories that undermine those narratives. Whether it’s literally using documentary to highlight an activist campaign or if its just telling a narrative story that feels like it couldn’t come out in the old world.

Contact Info:

• Website: jeremylogangray.com