I was born in 1990 in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up, I would sneak downstairs to watch scary movies with my dad. One summer, I watched Jurassic Park and The Thing. I reenacted those movies with my sister whenever I could!
During high school/college I worked at the local YWCA and battered women’s shelter teaching kids how to swim. Through teaching I started to develop my own directing style. I shot my first two short films, Puppy Love and My Friend Socrates. Like most fathers, mine thought filmmaking should be a hobby. I went to Northern Illinois University to pursue Engineering till I convinced my parents to let me go to film school, Columbia College Chicago! I was pretty rebellious and ended up failing my intro to film class. I also learned that my family was weeks away from losing the house. (It was a tough time!) I decided to go back to teaching at the YWCA and the shelter.
I borrowed my friend’s film textbooks and kept writing scripts in my spare time. Everytime I would go out to see a movie I felt the urge to pack up my car and just go to LA. So after a crazy life threatening night, I packed up my car and drove across the county to LA. I had only $200 and a Canon T2i. Finding work was damn near impossible without family or contacts in the industry. I worked a lot of free gigs as a PA. I would get kicked off set often for not knowing how to wrangle cable and basic set work. After working numerous PA jobs I eventually found myself as an AC/Camera operator for Discovery Channel for an awful showl. Later I got into gaffing music videos.
In 2015 I became an intern at BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. Where I shot something new everyday (even weekends)! I even got drunk for a video. I began to develop a style at BuzzFeed that got me noticed. I became the first full-time staff cinematographer for BuzzFeed’s Branded department, working on brands such as Toyota, Acer, and Purina. I filmed sharks with the Try Guys, I got to shoot Dear Kitten and Puppyhood. It was wild!
Sadly, they ended up closing my department. I calculated it out how many shorts I ended up making there and it was close to 200 viral short films. I had been a cinematographer, 1st AD, one job I knew nothing about was VFX. I figured it could help me out when I direct big movies so I got an internship at the VFX house, Pixomondo.
In the summer of 2017, I decided to make my first horror short for the My Annabelle Creation Contest called The Nurse. I gathered my friends that I shot my BuzzFeed projects and we threw it together in a day. It was finished and turned in 3 days later. It won and was optioned by New Line Cinema! While we awaited our meeting with New Line we made a second horror short, Whisper. It was shot in my bedroom with very little money. The next short film was a proof of concept for a feature, They Hear It.
They Hear It was a hell of a production, the DP quit and it snowed on us. Crazy enough I was contacted by The Picture Company who loved Whisper. With them I pitched it to Legendary where we sold it. David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) came aboard to write it. Two months later, we pitched Whisper to Amblin and they loved it. I actually have a video of myself crying hearing the news that Steven Spielberg loved my short film! Now, I’m prepping to direct my first movie!
-Julian