We were lucky to catch up with Jonny Ulasien recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jonny, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

Filmmaking has alway been my main passion, but I had forgone film school to pursue music full-time well into my thirties. This did eventually lead me back into filmmaking career as I started making music videos for the band I was writing and touring with in the early 2010’s, but I always wonder if I may have missed out on years of opportunities and developing my craft if I had chosen film instead of music. Whenever that thought crosses my mind, I reframe it positively and look at how my path is unique and find the value in my perspective.

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

My name is Jonny Ulasien and I’m a filmmaker from Kansas City, MO. For the past decade, I’ve directed narrative-focused music videos for a number of local and regional artists across all genres. I’m a strong believer in not letting budget or access to production needs dictate someone’s vision. Whenever I work with an artist, I say “whatever you want to do, we’ll find a way to make it happen.” This leads to a lot of my work incorporating visual effects or animation, which I do all myself. My latest video for Brent Windler’s “Spanish Jasmine” which is set in the Spanish riverside city of Alcalá de Henares, is completely animated, mainly because we could have never had access to that location and it also gave us an opportunity to take the visual element to a surreal place that would have been much tougher had it been live-action. I’m currently expanding beyond music videos and developing a short film adapted from Lauren Goodwin-Slaughter’s poem “Pulse”, which addresses the gun violence epidemic from the perspective of a mother teaching her 4-year-old son about death. Though it will be a true short film, it will still be influenced from my experience with music video work, incorporating a lyrical element of the poem itself and heavily featuring the song “Scattered on the Ground” by Ha Ha Tonka as a narrative device.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Early on in my career, I was all about the “hustler mindset”. A lot of people I worked with and around at the time sort of drove this into me and made me believe the only way to be successful was to focus most of my energy into promoting myself, chase every job posting, and applying for every opportunity that was available. It really burned me out and I think my work suffered because of it. More importantly, I realized how damaging it is to try to fight my way into every space as a white, cis-gender male. I find it much more rewarding to focusing all of my energy into my work, supporting other artists, and finding a community of like-minded people rather than trying to gain as much exposure as possible.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think society benefits as a whole when it values art as an exchange of ideas and not a commodity. When you support art, you’re supporting innovation in every aspect of society and you’re supporting social progress. Federal and state-funded grants can be huge opportunities to artists to grow and make an impact. Every time you vote, there are candidates who want to expand funding for the arts, especially on the local level. That’s one very easy, actionable way to support the arts.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jonnyulasien.com
• Instagram: @jonnyulasien
• Youtube: @jonnyulasien