A Batavia native is working on his first feature-length film called "R.O.G.E.R. & Me," a comedy about a tech geek sentenced to carry a live goldfish for a month. WNIJ’s Yvonne Boose finds out how Jayson Johnson, the founder of Strike Five Films, ended up in the California film industry.
Yvonne Boose
So, you were born in St. Charles and raised in Batavia. Can you tell me about some of the things that inspired you as far as filmmaking in this area that you were raised in?
Jayson Johnson
So, I grew up watching a lot of soap operas with my mom, and I think that for me that kind of introduced me to the world of filmmaking, also storytelling. Just because of soap operas, they're kind of, their storylines are so cheesy that you kind of pick up on them very easily. And I guess as a child, I was really entertained by that. And it also represented a time for me to bond with my mom. So, I guess I just always had the importance of film and just bonding with people that you love, and it just made sense to me to kind of go into it as a career.
Yvonne Boose
Okay, so when you talk about soap operas, were you doing “All My Children,” “Days of our Lives,” “As the World Turns?” You know, everyone had their favorite. Like my grandma watched the Channel 2 soap operas. My mom was Channel 7.
Jayson Johnson
My mom was “All My Children” or "All My Kids," as we would say. And then she used to watch “General Hospital,” and sometimes she'd watch what's the other one? One Life to Live. Yeah. So yeah, she was on all of them pretty much. Yeah.
Yvonne Boose
And I see that you went to school and you majored in communications. Tell me more about how you got interested in film?
Jayson Johnson
Kind of a crazy story, but there's Northern Illinois (University) where you're located at. There's Eastern Illinois (University) and then there's Southern Illinois (University), and I kind of treated all those schools like Goldilocks. Where I was looking at the party scene, and I was just like, NIU was just, it wasn't enough, and then Southern Illinois that was just too crazy. I didn't think I would ever get anything done there, but Eastern Illinois was just right. So, I picked Eastern Illinois off of that, and I didn't have an idea what I wanted to go into. So, I went into the orientation and had a big ballroom of all the, I guess, professors of those colleges, and all of them were wearing like business attire, and just like I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. But I did see a guy wearing a red bow tie, and I said, "Whatever you're teaching, I will do that." And that happened to be speech communication. So, the complete wrong way you should ever pick a major, but that's how I did it, and that's I guess it worked out for me.
Yvonne Boose
That was my, that's what I my undergrad was, speech communications from Chicago State, so I did learn about TV, radio, and all that stuff there. So going into speech communications, I know the different things that are thrown your way as far as the different classes and the different things you can run into. Why did film and like script writing, why did that speak to you?
Jayson Johnson
I think it’s just the ability to tell a story. I’d just grown-up watching stories with my mom, and you know I think as families we tell stories as ways to kind of entertain each other, and that's something that I felt like I always had a good grasp on. So, it's just when it came time to write or to visually tell a story is just something that I just felt a connection to, and I wanted to do it.
Yvonne Boose
Did you take classes for script writing at all?
Jayson Johnson
No, I actually didn't. So, at Eastern Illinois, they had a radio, TV, and film concentration, but it's really catered towards the nightly news because a lot of it is kind of run and gun, and it's not necessarily based on creative stuff. So, when I was there, I kind of learned the basics of that. But screenwriting was something that I taught myself as I kind of matured in my film career.
Yvonne Boose
Can you tell me how you did that?
Jayson Johnson
Sure. I bought an emotional support goldfish, and I put that on the desk because with screenwriting, especially when you're learning, you spend a lot of time in solitude, and you don't really have really anyone to say that's great or anyone to affirm that you're doing anything of value, and to me, my goldfish was that for me. So, I started to teach myself screenwriting. I would read it out loud. I'd look to the goldfish for affirmations, and it just seemed like a I don't know, just a symbiotic relationship that I was able to advance and kind of gain confidence in my screenwriting. But I wish it were something more elaborate. But that's how I taught myself screenwriting.
Yvonne Boose
Are there any books that you found were most helpful?
Jayson Johnson
Yeah, I would say there's a book called “Save the Cat.” And for the listeners that are not familiar with that book, it basically tells you to write characters that are that have some likable trait to them. Hence the title "Save the Cat." And then when you write characters that have a likable trait, then your audience will be more likely to follow that character during their hero's journey. Another book is this is probably more for editing, but I found it somewhat helpful for screenwriting. Walter Murch's “(In the) Blink of the Eye” is a really great book for just filmmaking in general, but for screenwriting, I think that helped me to understand the continuity of cuts and how to write scenes that would cut together well.
Yvonne Boose
Now, tell me about you starting your company. When did that happen?
Jayson Johnson
That happened in I want to say 2017. For years, I'd worked as a freelance operator with locations production management, and I just always felt that I had something more in the tank. I feel blessed to have the opportunity to just work in film, just in general. But I just knew that there was something else, and there were some stories that I could tell. So, in 2017, I took the risk to go out and start making short films on my own. When I first started, I just started financing my projects on my own, and over time the projects got more elaborate. The budgets got higher, and then eventually some awards and some accolades came with that.
Yvonne Boose
With your projects, how do you go about getting people to be a part of that, the actors and things like that?
Jayson Johnson
That's a good question. I for me, I think it's always been. I just started with my friends. You know, my friends were really interested in, you know my journey from the very beginning, and I said that “I'm going to do a short film.” And you know, before I could kind of get that out of my mouth, they were just like, "If you ever need an actor, I, you know, I want to be on camera,” and it was kind of surprising because some people were like, I've always wanted to be shot on camera, you know, and they would even mimic it out like you know they're getting shot by like a machine gun or something. So, I've always been lucky to have friends that were just interested in me as a person, and you know, kind of the stuff that I might make, and they've always volunteered. But so that was kind of the start of it. But you know, as we kind of went further on, I linked up with the right people that understood casting, and things got a little more advanced. But yeah, that's kind of how it started for me.
Yvonne Boose
Now, when did you go to California?
Jayson Johnson
I went to California. Let's see, I think I went about 2005. I finished grad school at Eastern Illinois. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I had a girlfriend at the time that had got this amazing job opportunity in Napa, California. So, she said, "If you want to come, then you know you can come. Otherwise, we have to break up." And I was just like, "Well, I'm not really doing anything here." So, I think I was working as a bartender in Illinois. So, I just decided to you know take a leap of faith, and within getting to Napa, I got hired at Francis Ford Coppola Winery within, I want to say three or four days of arriving in California.
Yvonne Boose
And how has that experience helped shape your career?
Jayson Johnson
I think it helped a lot. You know, first of all, you know Francis Ford Coppola is like one of them, you know, he's probably utterly the top five directors of all time. So, getting an opportunity to just work with him was just, you know, the dream I didn't know that I wanted. So, it was just, it was incredible because you know I was kind of starstruck when he finally came into the room, and I had told myself, well, he's just a normal person. He puts his pants on just like anybody else. But then he walked into the room, and I was just like, what did I say to him? But you know, I found him to be a really creative gentleman, very passionate about doing things the right way, being authentic to yourself, and I just learned a lot about him and just the work ethic and you know being an individual. So, I really owe him a lot to giving me confidence to you know even wanting to start a film career.
Yvonne Boose
Now I see that you bought a $35 camera on eBay, and so you taught yourself how to do camera work as well. And that sounds like wow! I'm surprised you didn't learn that in school because that was a part of the curriculum when I went for speech communications. We had to do camera work. We had to learn video, audio, and of course, back then, we're talking about VHS tapes and reel-to-reel tape. We had to learn script writing and acting. It was like all this collage of everything. So, did you even get taught like (the) simple concept of camera work in school?
Jayson Johnson
I did. So, like you, we were have those big bulky studio cameras that you zoom in on the eyes, and then you uh you do like a headshot of the news anchors, and that was pretty much it. So, you know you're just in the studio, and you're just you're not really capturing like uh like let's say you're outside, and you know the sun is in the background, and you want to try to balance out the shade and everything. We didn't learn all that, so this $35 camera was kind of like an entry way for me to do it, and I got so much use out of that camera. But yeah, I think that with that camera, I learned a lot about just framing shots, moving shots, and with a $35 camera, you know the stakes are very low. So, you could you could literally throw the camera in the air to get a shot, and if you know for breaks for whatever reason, it was just $35. So, I think that really taught me a lot about exploring what could be done with a camera?
Yvonne Boose
Now tell me about your run at film festivals.
Jayson Johnson
Yeah, so made eight short films, 90 festivals, 90 plus festivals actually, I think I just got a notification that our screenplay “R.O.G.E.R. and Me” got into a one, but won six times, and I'm kind of blown away by that because you know when you make something that's kind of homemade, I think you think that it's good, but you know I think in the back of your mind, well other people think that it's good. So, once I started to kind of get those accolades from these other festivals, I was just like, wow, you know, maybe I might have a chance at you know making this into a career beyond being a freelance contractor. So, my film festivals have I've been... I’ve been selected to film festivals across the globe now, and I'm kind of blown away by the reception of that, so.
Yvonne Boose
Have you done any back home?
Jayson Johnson
In Chicago? No, I don't know why.
Yvonne Boose
We’ve got the Beloit, even the Beloit Film Festival, Aurora. That's right by St. Charles. They have their film festival, Rockford 815 Shorts, there’s so much.
Jayson Johnson
Wow, I'm not even familiar with those. Yeah, so um, no, I haven't done it. A lot of mine have been in like California, New York, some in Italy, and then just sprinkled across like just you know random places across the you know United States. I would love to do an Illinois one, just because you know you can go home like that person, and then at that point, you know it's not surreal at that point. It becomes a real thing.
Yvonne Boose
Now, this film, “R.O.G.E.R. and Me,” tell me about the significance of this.
Jayson Johnson
This film it's significant because for one, it's based here in Richmond, California, Richmond at one point was the murder capital of United States, or one of them at least. And this film, Roger and Me, has no violence in it, so it's not kind of like one of those overdone arcs where you know the character is just trying to get out the hood, and you know, gets you know, shot at the at the at the end of it. No, this film is about an aspiring computer programmer that falls asleep at the wheel of his car and then crashes into a tropical goldfish store. And then the next day, a creative judge sentences him to carry a transponder embedded goldfish for 30 days. And in that story, I have the main character meeting characters throughout Richmond that are different than him, and there's a love story baked in there, and I just talk about how Black people are not a monolith, so you have a wide variety of Black archetypes. You know, you have your you have your thugs, you have your gangsters, but you also have your Black nerds that I don't think have been explored a lot on the cinema screen. So that this is a story about Black nerds and computers, and I'm I'm excited to tell this story.
Yvonne Boose
All right. Now, is there anything else you think our listeners need to know?
Jayson Johnson
Be sure to check me out online. My name is Jason Johnson, Strike Five Films. We're working on “R.O.G.E.R. and Me” now, and you'll hear a lot about me in the future.
Yvonne Boose
All right. Well, thank you. It was so nice to meet you, and best wishes with everything, sir.
Jayson Johnson
Thank you so much for having me.
