We recently connected with Jules East and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jules thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

It all started with my dissatisfaction with the limited choices of movies that are out there. I flipped through hundreds of channels and a lot of times ended up with nothing to watch. I find myself often entertain myself by thinking about stories and scenarios in my head, therefore, I started to write screenplays. I entered my first screenplay to the Hollywood Screenplay Award and won a silver prize for sci-fi category. After that, for the consecutive year, I won a grand prize again for a sci-fi horror and an official selection for a family adventure script all written by me. When I get a call from someone who’s interested to option my script, I know I’m on to something. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, hence, we have a lot of independent filmmakers around here up to the Sacramento area. I find that they need a smaller budgeted script because they are not Hollywood Studios, therefore for the first few years I have been writing low cost indie film scripts and sold it for a little bit of money, since they would be changing the scripts so much, I did not want the credit. After doing this for a while, I went to their film set to see how my story unfolded. It’s by helping them, I learned everything from fun raising, location scouting, permit, insurance, casting, etc. from pre-production to post production. A few years later, I’ve gained enough experience and confidence to make my own film. This year, I will be releasing two films, first “River of Ghosts”, a thriller, which is already released in January 9 this year, available on all cables, satellite and streaming channels, my second film “Alone in Venice” which was screened in the 80th Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy last year will also be released this Summer.

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.

My name is Jules East. Jules East Productions LLC is a company I established in 2019 for the purpose of making original feature films. I do this as explained before, to contribute one or two extra movies hopefully per year or every other year, for everyone to watch. What sets Jules East Productions apart is, we only produce original content, it’s a lean team and our goal is to make entertaining thriller, horror and art house drama feature films. In the future, I am thinking of establishing a bigger and general company, making Jules East Productions LLC just a wing under its umbrella, because we are also considering making web series and gaming app as well.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I first had the idea of the story of “Alone in Venice”, everyone bet that I couldn’t get it made. First of all, it is a feature length film that must be shot entirely in Venice, Italy. When they heard Venice, they shook their heads because of how costly the place is for film shooting, and how noisy and crowded it is, as it is a famous tourist spot. Secondly, the story involves the flood in the city and by the time the script was finished, we were at the last year when we were told the billion dollars flood gate would be up and the city will never be flooded again. Third, if we could get the flood, it would be in November, which was good because it would be the off tourist season, but bad because it would be the rainy season. Fourth, the main cast I chose, Apollo, was a fashion model and had never acted in any film before, to shoulder this heavy character based, basically a solo acting one-man-show art house drama. Apollo, when he saw my shooting schedule for the first time, was shocked, because there was a big blank on every day. He asked me why and how, and I told him, that depends on a day-to-day basis on how the weather would be. If it rained we would shoot indoor scenes if it’s sunny we would go outdoors. No one supported my vision at first, to complete shooting this film in Venice Italy in 13 days without any budget. Finally I made it happen by getting a good help from a detective friend in Italy whom I helped him before to get a zero dollar shooting budget (of course there are conditions attached), got grant money due to being a minority new director, and thank God, we have enough sunny days to shoot out door and it rained enough for some raining scenes I need and we’ve got the flood!

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I believe in human beings. I care about each individual who works for me to the core, such as what are their aspirations and motivations, I go as far as helping them solve their problems in life, so they can be focused and give their all while working for me. Most of all, I believe in synergy. Before assembling a team for a specific project, I try to tie in only the bunch who wants the same thing as I and the project do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hongjuleseast/

Image Credits
They all belong to me.