Hermosa Native Recalls Road to Filmmaking

The glitz and glam of Hollywood has yet to faze Jason Carpenter.

The young director’s eyes gloss over as he recalls screening his work at the Bel-Air Film Festival or winning "best action short" in Beverly Hills, but they absolutely sparkle as he tells the inspiration behind each project.

They grow large as he explains his personal connection to each on-screen story.

Carpenter, 25, who grew up in Hermosa Beach, won six film festival awards last year and his short action film, Agent 6, was licensed for distribution at the HollyShorts festival by Shorts International.

Sitting outside of in downtown Hermosa Beach on Friday afternoon, the filmmaker, wearing a California cool T-shirt, jeans and sand-colored beanie, thoughtfully reflected on how his past now influences his creativity:

Hermosa Beach Patch: How did your interest in this career get started, or when did you really become interested in movies?

Jason Carpenter: You know, there used to be a theater, actually, up the street here off of Pier Avenue up on the left. I remember that theater. I used to go there all the time because I lived off of 7th Street and Prospect, so I used to just walk down there when I was in seventh grade or sixth grade or something, and I’d just watch a bunch of movies by myself, which is kind of weird for a kid to do, but my Dad started me off on it and then I’d always look it up online and find the times.

It was kind of my first experience. I really loved films, even though it wasn’t really in the forefront of my mind at the time, like, "Oh, I want to be a filmmaker based on liking films." It just was the first sort of spark that I had.

Patch: What kind of films were they showing, and what was the theater like?

Carpenter: Funny thing is, I don’t really remember the films necessarily. It was just the whole experience of going that I really remember. It was kind of a strange little "me time" thing, you know. It was really special.

Patch: Where did you go to elementary school? Here in Hermosa?

Carpenter: I went to up in Palos Verdes, and down in Hermosa Valley actually for a year in seventh grade…. Then I went to four different high schools, which is kind of interesting. I actually had a tumultuous period—a little crazy time of my life.

Patch: Did that time inspire you? Whenever I meet people who are really living their dream, they always pull from that…

Carpenter: That hard time in their life? Yea. I think life experience in general really helps creativity. Just the fact that you get to go to that emotional part of yourself that you wouldn’t be able to go to unless you’ve had that experience. For instance, my father passed away when I was 16.

Patch: Oh, I’m sorry.

Carpenter: I feel like it was kind of just something that happened, you know, because he was a little bit detached from my mother and I. I’m an only child, and we had this interesting relationship. But that kind of, it was almost like a milestone for me, and it changed my life completely. I went in a different direction, and at the time I hadn’t really thought about "Oh wow my life’s going to change." But over the years, that was the catalyst for me to find myself.

I moved to New York when I was 18 years old by myself, without knowing anybody, and I lived in a hostel for six months. It was really, that was a tough time. But I felt like I had to sort of be isolated, you know.

Patch: Why New York?

Carpenter: At that young age of 17, turning 18, I had this idealistic view of New York as the place where artists congregate. It was sort of the place for people to be really free artistically, or so I thought. I still think that to an extent right now, but it isn’t the same environment I envisioned idealistically when I was 18.

New York is one of the toughest places in the world. I got there and I got beat up basically, not physically, but mentally I was beat up. I felt like "Wow, just to get a job at a restaurant here was impossible as an 18-year-old." I was really trying hard.

Patch: Do you remember when you moved to New York, what was your first goal?

Carpenter: I didn’t really know at the time. I was enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, and enrolled in film history classes and stage acting classes. That was an eye-opening experience for me. Getting to know actors and the whole artistic world, I guess you could say.

It really kind of opened me up as a person too. It was a therapy for me to get up on stage and have people look at me and see through me in a way. I’m actually a very introverted person, being an only child and everything. At least I was, until then. That made me grow up.

Patch: Then, when did you do your first film?

Carpenter: Officially or just messing around with a camera? In New York I did my first attempt at a film, which is pretty hilarious looking back on it. I had no idea what I was doing.

Patch: I know your first official film was Dark Roads. When was that?

Carpenter: That was end of 2009 we were finishing up. I was just applying everything I had learned at film school at the time. It got accepted into a few film festivals and distribution and stuff. I was really encouraged by that, even though it wasn’t a massive success or anything, it was cool.

Patch: What was your first festival or screening like for your recent film, Agent 6?

Carpenter: One was the Bel-Air Film Festival and the other one was Williamsburg in New York film festival, and those were the first two that I got into. My first screening was actually at Bel-Air so that was my first.

That was the first time I got to see an audience reaction to anything I’ve done, so that was really nerve wrecking, and I was sitting there amongst people. They actually didn’t know I was directing the film so they just were saying whatever they wanted and the reaction was just raw… I was more watching the audience than the film.

Patch: What was some of the body language that stood out to you most as far as reactions?

Carpenter: The one I liked the most was when my first film (Dark Roads) had a lot of special effects stuff, like machine gun blanks and a lot of gunfire. The best reaction I got was people reacting to the machine gun fire like, "Whoa." That was pretty cool, but I think the worst part of it was when I looked at a scene that I was really proud of, and I looked at the audience and they just had blank faces. And I thought, "Oh… that didn’t have the impact I was expecting."

Patch: How do you think that shaped you now, as a filmmaker? What did you learn from it?

Carpenter: That made me learn that the audience is very intuitive. You can’t trick them into thinking a certain way unless you do it well on the screen.

There are also things nobody tells you, like the smallest things can really make a huge difference. For example, if the catering doesn’t show up every six hours, the crew’s not going to work for you. Or if the focus is off for every single shot, do it over and over until you get it right. Even the smallest little thing you can think of can really shut down a production, and prolong the whole process.

Patch: That’s funny because it sounds a lot like business in general. You need your business plan—which would be pre-production—and you need to execute correctly.

Carpenter: Definitely. I think that’s the case, and working with good people. That’s a huge part of what I believe in.

Patch: How do you think of your concepts and ideas when starting a film?

Carpenter: It really comes from everyday, what I like in films, and my life. It comes from personal experience. I feel like if you’re going to make a film you might as well know what you’re talking about... I think doing a film that comes from within myself is really important.

Dark Roads was written in New York and I lived in this Brooklyn neighborhood where it was a bunch of wannabe Italian mobsters. It was really interesting.

Patch: I read everything about Agent 6, and I’m assuming some of that was inspired by your time in New York?

Carpenter: It actually was really inspired by the classic James Bond films. I’ve seen every single one of them, especially the Sean Connery’s that I’ve always been a fan of. I wanted to recreate a modern version, a modern short, of a James Bond film basically.

Patch: Do you have any other favorite directors, actors or films?

Carpenter: I do like David Fincher, who obviously just came out with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Patch: Well, I know you said you’re inspired by those genres and your life experience. So when you sit down to start a project, what’s your first step? What’s the first thing you write?

Carpenter: I’m actually writing my first feature right now. I really wanted to make it extremely personal. It’s basically a film about the Yakuza in Japan, which is the equivalent of the Italian mob in the U.S. They’re the biggest crime organization in the world, and it’s a story about a couple of sisters, half Japanese and half American. Their father was a Navy man, and I’m actually half Japanese, half American, too. So it really comes from my love of my culture, really my mother’s culture. She’s really inspired me a lot in this film, specifically.

The Yakuzas believe that in their history, they’re ancestors of Samurai who defended villages, that’s their kind of idealistic view of themselves, even though they are most obviously criminals.

Just doing research on that and really having a love for the gangster genre is what inspired me as well, but this is much more of a character-driven thing and I really pulled from my experiences in Japan and growing up there. I used to go every year up until I was about 16 or 17.

Patch: You’d go with your family?

Carpenter: Yea, just my mom. She has family in the south and so I used to get bullied a lot over there because I was what they called a "Hapa," which is a half-Japanese.

I have a goal to finish the feature within the next few months.