We caught up with the brilliant and insightful John M. O’Connor a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

John M., thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

Sorcery Cinema or Sorcery as we brand ourselves publicly came to be after we began seeking a fun and marketable title to represent ourselves by. Originally our ragtag group of filmmakers labeled ourselves as Lasersaures Rex. We were running the competition circuit for things like the 1917 one shot challenge and other similar competitions looking to show our prowess. After a bit our team started researching unregistered company names and came to find Sorcery hadn’t been taken by anyone yet. (surprising i know!) We re-branded on Halloween 2019 and submitted our first project under the new brand to the M. Night Shyamalan “vote by night” competition creating a piece encouraging everyone to get out an vote because their voices mattered and ended up winning the competition being featured by Shyamalan on his channels. He’s quoted saying we are some of the next generation of filmmakers to be on the look out for and that our piece was soulful and lyrical with a sense of history.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I got into film and television while in high school at summit high in summit county. Scott Porter the Film and Theater teacher encouraged us to follow our dreams and hone our skills when ever we could. His amazing leadership and teaching inspired me at the age of 15 to dive head first into this industry and I will be thankful to my last breath. Truly a case of a single teacher impacting a life, I found my purpose and would of dropped out with out him. During my Jr. year I landed an internship with a production company coming through to film a documentary on the South Park Music Festive. I showed them what I could do and they put a $20k+ camera in my hands and made me their B cam operator with the following words of wisdom “don’t drop it”. After a successful filming they were delighted with the footage and invited me the following November to the International cinematographers convention in Poland. From there i went to college for film in New Mexico and it was the right time to be there! I got camera and production internships on Thor, Cowboys and Aliens, True Grit and more. Following graduation I moved to Hollywood where over 9 years I worked for Entertainment weekly, People Magazine, Rolling Stone, GQ, and a boat load of productions just to list a small sample of the ground covered. EW and People were wonderful to work as a cinematographer for and where a large body of my current work shines. Filming cover stories, interviews, home tours and original content like googles what to watch. The some of the music videos and independent productions were very hit or miss. Some of those indie and music video groups showcased the harsh side of the industry. 18+ hour days on set for a garbage rate and unsafe working environments. I was even electrocuted on one music video due to a producers neglect for safety. I was rewiring a chandler and had the circuit breaker turned off and without following safety procedure decided they need to flip it back on for the rest of crew. Cutting my safety lock off the breaker and flipping it. I was blown off a 12ft ladder and was lucky my spotter caught me. Not going to mention the artist we were filming for because they weren’t in the wrong and don’t deserve the bad press for a bad producer. After a while a hand full of friends, my now business partners decided that we wanted to see a change in this industry and we wanted to be that change so we founded our own company and started charging ahead. We’ve been lucky with who we’ve met and worked with. Individuals like Tony Oppedisano, the manager of Don Rickles and Frank Sinatra. Working with Him and his business partner Michael Guarnera and their company Winbrook Productions. We’ve filmed Pre-Broadway runs of “Drag the Musical” staring Alaska and “Singing Revolution” a historic true story of a country singing its way to freedom from Russia’s grasps. Now we are all working together on up-rezing, remastering and distributing 20+ never released Don Rickles specials on our Youtube channel “The Don Rickles Channel”. The partnership with them also has us working an a few projects I cant talk about quite yet but very excited to share once we move into our next stages of production! Outside our relationship with Winbrook Productions we have also had the amazing opportunity to work with the Ultraman Franchise from Tsuburaya. Covering their American Debut and cross over with Marvel comics. Sorcery also handles a number corporate, privet and social content clients. On top of all that Sorcery has been heavily pushing our original IP game as hard as we can. We have a Game show pilot “Even the odds”, an international documentary series pilot “Big Mountain Soul: Ski the world” both currently in talks for distribution and series order. You can check out “Even the odds” on our partner Noah Grossmans YouTube and the teaser for “Big Mountain Soul” on Sorcery’s website. Finally we are pushing a slate on narrative features that are working to showcase a diverse body stories including LGBTQ+, BIPOC and Women driven narratives being told by those communities with Sorcery facilitating production, and distribution. If you’d like to be apart of Big Mountain Soul we are seeking sponsors on our go fund me and if you’d like to be a larger investor in the project please reach out to our general email and well follow up form one of our producers.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

So for reference Sorcery is co-owned by five of us and we all met in Hollywood working the “difficult, backbreaking, and mentally taxing” jobs. The forge of friendship that occurs in those tough environments becomes stronger than steel. One story in particular stands out, how I met our Co-Founder and Executive in charge of productions, Jon Correia. I had just moved to LA and was living in Burbank and like most starry eyed up and comers was looking to sink my big fish small pound teeth into the film-making ocean I had just moved to. It took me three months to find even the smallest job doing camera or lighting. Word to the wise, If you are moving to LA for film do one of the following or all of it. Make sure you’ve saved up 3-6 months rent on-top of moving costs, network before you move to try and line up gigs/contracts/work of some kind ahead of time, and know someone whos already in the Hollywood scene. That last one is a little difficult. I only did the first and looking back wish I had done the second as well.

A very small Indie group was filming some low ball budget comedyish content and their producer saw I worked on Thor and didn’t care that is was an internship. “Ive got a lighting guy who worked on Thor coming to light our project”. At the time I had no Idea Jon Correia was supposed to be doing it and they scammed him into doing it for free with the old “learn on the job” bs. Correia was already more than qualified to handle their shoot and deserved to be paid but just like me was trying to get established. So they told him I was taking his job and he could learn from me and they could hire him in the future if he learned well. They told me I had an Intern that could help me. They paid me with out question and I found out once we got into filming that i stole Correias job. Thank God or the Universe or what ever you believe in, Correia was friendly and held back any resentment. Though he still pokes me about stealing his job every now and then in jest. The project was only about a week. Our mutual friendly natures and the distaste for the three ring circus that production put us in forged our friendship, From there we hung out, worked various jobs together and separately. Correia went on to work for a number of shows with A-Smith and NBC Universal on projects such as American Ninja Worrier, Ninja worrier kids and Quantum leap on the production side of things. No matter the success and failures we’ve both seen in our careers Ill always be thankful for meeting him. Hes one of a handful of people I’d trust my career, and livelihood with.

Any advice for managing a team?

To anyone looking to run a production company in the entertainment sector your team is your lifeline and backbone. Film and television is one of the most collaborative art forms in the world. Keeping the teams morale high in such a competitive environment has been difficult over the years and we’ve had points where we have seriously struggled. There is an incredibly high failure rate in this industry and we all feel the burden regularly. One of the things this team has done well with perseverance in the face this has been consistently checking in with each other and allowing the space for us to internally vent our fears and frustrations. From the state of the industry, to a rough client, a bad day on set or even communication between the internal team, we’ve always believed in being there for each other and that communication is key. We have all worked to keep each other strong, taking the time to hear one another. When someone is having a rough time the team listens and provides encouragement, seeking growth for us all. There have been times when our Creative director or lead editor worked months on a project and the client trashes it with a one sentence email instead of giving helpful feedback, or times our Producers my self included spent months and even years pitching projects to studios to only get ghosted or shut down when we were about to move forward. We all have had bad days but we all band together to lift each other up when things get low. Id say that is what has made us as strong as we are, we have a resilience that comes from being in the trenches together, compassion for the frustrations and fears, and a trust in each other to keep on moving forward even when the light at the end of a tunnel is dim.

Contact Info:

• Website: sorcerycinema.com
• Instagram: @sorcerycinema
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sorcerycinema
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDonRicklesChannel
• Other: Get involved from general inquiries to investors: [email protected] BMS: Ski The World Doc Go Fund Me: https://bit.ly/3GTpda8

Image Credits
James Suter Ethan Bellows Jon Correia Self