We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jordan Somani a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jordan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
Early in the career of freelance artists, it can be hard to balance the types of projects we work on to maintain financial stability while also building towards a long and fruitful career. My favorite projects to work on have been independently produced narrative films, which are artistically fulfilling as well as important for the portfolio as a film editor. Ideally I would only take on these projects, but there is usually little money behind them and living in Los Angeles is expensive. Therefore I also would work on projects like social media advertisements and YouTube content, which are crucial for my short-term profitability, but don’t really align with my long-term career goals. It is a frustrating cycle that I’m sure many can relate to, where the need to be secure in the present is preventing you from progressing toward a secure future. The balance has gotten easier to maintain as I have gained more experience, because I am able to take on more projects that are both profitable for me and advance my career trajectory. But it was a major struggle when I first started in the industry.
Jordan, 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 am a film editor from North Vancouver, B.C, Canada and I am now based in Los Angeles. I started filmmaking in my teen years, and followed that passion to Chapman University in 2016 where I studied film and television production. I wasn’t exactly sure which department in film I wanted to pursue, but Chapman gave me the chance to work in every part of the filmmaking process and learn the ins and outs of each role. It took until the end of university to decide my favorite part of film was post-production, and I started to take on small editing gigs for people in my network. I’ve now spent over four years editing professionally and am committed to it as a long-term career.
While I cut projects for lots of different clients, I work closely with a Los Angeles based production company called Silience where I am the head of post-production. I helped the founders when they were first building the company, and I have edited many of their flagship projects. We’ve made music videos, commercials, documentaries, social media advertisements, short films, and over the past couple years have started to move into larger feature films. Silience produced a feature last year, “Young Blondes: Stalked and Murdered”, that was an official selection at two major festivals and is in the middle of securing distribution for next year. Everyone at our company shares a passion for narrative filmmaking, and we take that storytelling mindset into every type of project we do.
I’ve been fortunate to work with many exciting clients over the years, such as Adidas, Reebok, Sony Music, Universal Music and more. Some cool recent projects have been promotional content for comedian Eric Andre, music producer Monte Booker, and a music video / short film directed by Snoop Dogg. The work I have been most proud of though is my narrative work, mainly a film from 2022 that our company produced and I edited, called “Mono No Aware”. Working on this movie changed my perspective on editing and storytelling, in the flexible nature of the film and how free I was to break all the traditional rules to create something raw and meaningful. We took the film to official selection at the BFI London Film Festival, where our cast and crew travelled to London to present the film. It was a very impactful moment for me as a filmmaker.
The future is looking really exciting, as I am currently in the middle of post-production on two feature films under our company that we hope to have completed by the end of the year. Alongside that I am also working on projects in the fashion, documentary and music video worlds as I like constantly working on different formats of film. When I’m not glued to the editing timeline on my computer, I love to golf and hike! And watch movies.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
My co-workers at Silience are mostly people that I met while attending film school. A couple of my friends a year above me in school were making music videos for local artists, and I would often come onto their sets to help with whatever was needed. It was mainly production assistance or grip and electric roles. I was still figuring out what area of the industry I wanted to focus on, so I wasn’t handling any post-production for them yet. In my last year of school, I expressed interest in editing one of the music videos, and they trusted me with the edit despite never seeing any of my post work. They gave me the confidence I needed to pursue post-production as my main focus, and it led to the start of my career as an editor.
Film school isn’t perfect, and definitely isn’t required for someone to work in the industry, but it was incredibly valuable in the way it fostered connections between the students. Not only did I meet my business partners there, but an entire network of filmmakers who now work in the industry. The majority of the projects I work on involve my network of Dodge alumni in some capacity.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Hopefully it’s not too corny but the mission really is driven by the love for making movies! This art form has had such a big impact on me my whole life, in the way that it can stimulate thought and emotion and present new perspectives. Seeing narrative projects that I edited be received, interpreted and reacted to has been such a profound experience, even at the independent level. The goal for me as well as the directors and producers that I work with is to push our films to bigger and bigger scales to both fully realize our visions and reach the most amount of people we can.
The entertainment industry is changing so much and while it’s important to embrace the direction we’re moving in, my collaborators and I are also aiming to keep the core of filmmaking alive in our work as we move into a new world of media. There have been times when I’ve been pessimistic about the future of the industry, but lately I have noticed a shift in audiences gravitating towards movies with well-crafted storytelling. This makes me hopeful that this art form will always have it’s place in the world because of its ability to tap into the human condition, and I hope to contribute to those impactful projects for a long time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jordansomani.com
- Instagram: jordan_som
