We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Julian Tejeda a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Julian, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happy a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Personally I am happy as a creator, I find that when I am being creative I’m always more optimistic, however, there are times I do wonder if a regular job would be the safer route. I’m sure many people just starting out in the industry can all relate and say that the pay isn’t always so great (sometimes nonexistent). It can be a huge deterrent that leaves people thinking they’d be better off settling down with a regular job where the pay is stable, I would know as I’ve experienced this a copious amount of times. But, I think it’s important to remember that as creatives we don’t do what we do for the money, we do it because we love to create. While money is always a lovely thing, it shouldn’t be the driving factor behind you wanting to be an artist, it should be your art.

Julian, 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 got my start in the industry when my high schools media class produced a feature film titled “Horror High”. On this project I was a lead actor, co-writer, associate producer, props master, and score composer. This project would later be picked up by ITN distribution and is set to be released worldwide on physical media on May 24th. Because of my work on Horror High I was able to get an internship on a SAG-AFTRA production and a score composer position on a feature film that was shot in Joshua, Texas.

Afterwards I worked on a handful of short films and even had the opportunity to compose the original soundtracks for a few of them! As of recently I’ve started up a production company with one of my good friends and we’ve produced two short films, one of which was accepted into a handful of film festivals! We are currently planning our third film and intend to shoot a feature next summer.

I’m truly proud of the work I’ve created over the past few years and I can only hope it continues to be as fruitful of a journey as it has been so far.

Is there a mission driving your creative journey?

I think my mission is to simply create art for other people to enjoy. There is nothing more rewarding to me than watching people view my work, enjoy it, and get inspired from it. It’s the best!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

A great story of personal resilience would definitely be the story of how my production company, Out Of Touch Productions, came to be.

The idea of forming a production company had crossed my mind at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, eventually it snowballed into a grand idea that I knew I wanted to make a reality. At first I thought about naming it after my initials and calling it “JDT Films” but that didn’t stick. Then in my junior year one of my good friends got on board with the idea of forming a production company and we began shooting ideas back and forth to each other. Eventually we landed on the name “Out Of Touch Productions” and had a notebook full of ideas! Finally things seemed to be taking flight…and then the pandemic caused everything to crash and burn. As the world entered isolation, our original set of project ideas were scrapped, it seemed like the production company was dead on arrival.

Fast forward to the summer of 2020, My friend and I had reunited on the set of feature film that was being shot in Corsicana, Texas. As soon as we started working together again we knew we couldn’t let our production company slip through the cracks, so we decided to give it another go. This time we hit the ground running and quickly threw together a short film titled “The Upward Turn”. Afterwards, the company once again had to take a backseat while we finished our senior year of high school. As soon as we graduated, we once again hit the ground running and began working on as many projects as we could. So far we’ve released two short films (one of which was accepted into numerous festivals) and are currently shooting our next project!

Without our patience and resilience our company wouldn’t exist. I think it is important to remember that you have to fail before you can succeed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://youtube.com/channel/UChxdCIXOrqaSuFw2Q7LmT6A
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julian_d_tejeda?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UChxdCIXOrqaSuFw2Q7LmT6A
• Other: IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11718235/?ref_=tt_cl_t_8 https://linktr.ee/juliantejeda Production Company Instagram: https://instagram.com/out_of_touch_productions_?igshid=YTM0ZjI4ZDI=

Image Credits
Julian Tejeda Ahna-Marie Cruz Abby Glass Tyler J. Case