Q&A + Premiere: Eli Jonathan "JOCK" Short Film
Photos By Ryann Funk
CREATING A WORLD FOR THE LISTENER TO STEP INTO - Eli Jonathan showcases the story behind his latest EP with his short film “JOCK”. Songwriter, performer and producer Eli Jonathan not only draws inspiration from indie pop and pop music themselves, but also experimental visual art, leading him to see the value in having a strong visual side to accompany his work. After his debut project Kennedy in August 2019, Jonathan has since released EPs Princeton and most recently Jock. Jock explores the character archetypes from 1980s coming-of-age movies that we all have a special place in our heart, courtesy of John Hughes. Centering around that main character energy, the EP plays on the idea of what it means to see yourself a character in the movie that is your own life.
To accompany JOCK, Jonathan alongside his creative team Gemma Cross and Samara Lennox create a world to showcase and bring to life the characters explored in the EP. Described as “an ode to being young and human connection”, the short film is a mini teenage dream. Escape into “JOCK” and read below to learn more about the making of the short film.
LUNA: The video series/short film for JOCK is really well done and just an incredible piece of work - congrats to you all! How does it feel to finally have this out?
CROSS: Thank you so much! We are all SO excited for JOCK to finally be released. One of the things I am the most excited about is for the world to see all of the hard work our cast and crew put in. We had such a talented cast and crew, and were so lucky to be able to work with them; I’m just excited for everyone to see all of the hard work they put in! -Gemma
LENOXX: Finally having the project coming out feels amazing. We all worked so hard and came together in such a cool way, a lot of us didn’t even really know each other beforehand, so being able to put our all into every part of this and then see what we were able to do is pretty incredible. This is also my first time screenwriting primarily by myself so seeing the exact scenes I was picturing in my mind all come together and create this beautiful storyline is really a feeling like nothing else in the world.
JONATHAN: I really think it’s eye opening. There's a new perspective for music I’ve made that was out for a considerable amount of time before the visual aspect was conceived. It’s been focus shifting to see what my art makes people dream up. Especially as it’s a big goal of mine to inspire people to make more art in different facets than what I’m experienced in.
LUNA: Can you briefly explain what role you each had in the making of the project?
CROSS: Everyone on the crew definitely fulfilled multiple roles and wore a lot of different hats. My roles were co-director (with Samara Lennoxx), producer, creative director, videographer & editor... the list goes on. We were all so passionate about the project that we were excited to do a lot of different things to bring it to life!
LENOXX: Yeah so for my role, I started out as the creative director and was helping a lot with ideas but then I ended up moving more into the screenwriter and director roles which is when Gemma decided we should be co-directors. The base ideas for each video and the overall concept had already been created by Gemma, Eli and Sarah then I came in for pre-production and created all of the shotlists and wrote out all of the scenes and kind of put all of the ideas they had into a more concrete storyline and filled in a lot of the gaps in between ideas. I was starting with a great foundation from what they had already come up with so it was easy to build off of. Then on the days we were actually shooting I created the shooting schedules for us to make sure we stayed on track and Gem and I co-directed side by side, which was cool because she was behind the camera so she was able to bring the perspective of what was working through the lens and I was able to bring the perspective of having created all the shots, so together we were able to make sure every single small detail was copacetic with the storyline and that everything blended and worked together.
JONATHAN: At first I thought just music in general! But then I was obviously ecstatic to star in it. But what was really my favorite might’ve been making the interludes. I had a bunch of music made that people were making art inspired by already. But I was also able to go back and make music purely for the video. Most of which won’t be released in any other form rather than as I heard it in my head as I watched the early forms of the video.
LUNA: While music videos are nothing new this idea of a video series/a short film to accompany an EP is definitely not as common. What sparked this whole idea to begin with?
CROSS: The idea came from an idea Eli, Sarah Archer (cast/crew) and I had during a coffee meeting in September 2020. We were meeting to plan visual concepts for the EP, and started out by brainstorming a concept for one music video. Over the conversation, we realized we had so many ideas and thought, why not create them all? We rolled with that idea, and wrote brief outlines for what became JOCK, that same day. It was a combination of good conversation, very strong coffee, and pure excitement.
JONATHAN: For me it was definitely missing human interaction, day trips and time with friends. Missing time not focused on working. I was missing days and nights that made me feel like nothing mattered more than the people I was with. It was something I got a taste of while we were making the film and its something I want to get back so badly.
LUNA: Once y’all thought about this visual project, what steps did to you take to bring this all to life?
CROSS: The production process was very, very quick. We realized that if we wanted to bring our concepts to life, we would have to shoot right away to account for things like weather & lighting changing as we go into winter. We started by writing out brief outlines of what we wanted the whole thing to look like, and then immediately reached out to people we wanted for cast and crew.
We were so lucky to have everyone we asked say yes- which was outrageous as it was so last minute. I feel so honored as a director and the person who put the cast and crew together, to have had my first pick of creatives to help me on this project. We also had an all-woman crew, which was something I wanted going into it. As someone pursuing the film industry, the chances to work with many other women are unfortunately slim, and I wanted to create that environment with some of the most talented women I know. The whole timeline of Jock, from planning to filming, was only about two months, and done in only six days of shooting. This is not a lot of time at all, so it was definitely a very chaotic time. But we were all so excited to finally have a huge project to undertake, after being inside all year, that we fully threw ourselves into it.
JONATHAN: Huge step was casting. Might’ve been the biggest step. Building a team of people that were passionate about the aspect of the production that they were involved in. I had a lot of new collaborators that helped define the amount of different artists that can mesh together easily and no one has to fight over the same job on a project. It makes choosing a crew so similar to choosing a cast because its all about creative focus and personalty.
LUNA: What were some key inspirations (besides the EP of course), that shaped the look and feel of the videos?
CROSS: The main inspiration for the EP itself is 80’s character archetypes a la Breakfast Club. We decided to bring that idea to life with creating characters based around these archetypes (the edgy girl, the jock, the cool kid), and we gave each song a character. Very high school-esque characters. The inspiration for the look and feel definitely came from John Hughes 80s movies and coming of age movies (Perks of Being a Wallflower in particular). The cast and crew and I are all in our 20s, which is a time of a lot of self discovery. We’re all very obsessed with the idea of coming of age in media, and that was definitely our biggest inspiration.
LENOXX: Some of the biggest inspirations for JOCK were 80’s movies. Eli’s whole concept of stereotypical character archetypes was really based off of 80’s movies, so we felt it was really important to stay true to that when building out each scene. While writing the scenes and creating the shot lists, I was watching “Pretty in Pink”, “Ferris Bueller's Day off”, “Sixteen Candles” all of those really heavily inspired the overall feel and filming styles of the video, especially the scene where Mercury (Sabina), comes out of the closet in their crazy outfit; we were able to the turn it into a reveal by slowly panning from their feet up their body, this was heavily inspired by the opening scenes of Molly Ringwald getting ready in “Sixteen Candles”. None of us had ever shot car scenes before so I had to do a lot of research on how to build them out in a way that made sense, I watched a lot of car scenes from Wayne’s World and Pulp Fiction, which was super helpful. From the very beginning we knew we wanted a Perks of Being a Wallflower moment in the tunnel for Mercury, so I think the mood and visual tones of that movie also ended up really heavily influencing that entire song.
JONATHAN: 80s movies. Modern teen movies that celebrate character archetypes. I liked involving myself in movies that include the simpler type of characters. Or that remind you you don’t have to be as complex of a human as you can absolutely all of the time. Its really nice to be a character every once in a while.
LUNA: Though I’m sure COVID-19 presented some challenges for this project, aside from that, what was the most difficult part about putting the project together?
CROSS: The hardest part was definitely the short timeline between pre-production and filming. It was only about two weeks. We spent that two weeks getting everything together and preparing as much as we could. Looking back now, I’m glad we did it so quickly because we never lost momentum. We were just so excited to get all of our ideas out there.
LENOXX: I think the most difficult part about putting the project together was aside from COVID stuff was possibly the timeline we were working within and the weather. We had a very short pre-production period; all of the shot lists and the entire storyline was pretty much done in one week and then we started shooting. Living in Seattle we definitely knew that rain might be a factor but it definitely ended up drastically changing the storyline and shot plans for several of the videos because there were certain things we just couldn’t film in the rain. The other part that was really difficult but probably also one of our favorite parts of the whole process was filming the tunnel scene. It took a lot of planning to figure out how to do it safely and in a way where we wouldn’t get stopped by police and honestly part of how we pulled that off I think came from luck. It was a very high stress moment for all of us, there was a lot of yelling and excitement and all of us sitting at the edges of our seats in the car trying to pull off shooting this scene while going 60 mph on the freeway going through the i90 tunnel. Honestly though, it’s something I'll remember for the rest of my life. It was one of the moments where we felt like if we can do this, we can do anything.
JONATHAN: It was the biggest visual project wed all ever attempted. For the biggest music project id ever attempted. It started with a very intensive discussion about crazy ideas for what could be done for my art. The struggle after that discussion became viewing the project as an artistic project. Something I wanted to look back at and be proud of rather than the logical next step in art or some crazy insurmountable feat in the time frame we’d given ourselves.
LUNA: Can you share a favorite moment/memory from the filming process?
CROSS: My favorite memory was when we were filming the tunnel scene in “Mercury.” It was definitely one of the most challenging things I’ve ever filmed, just because of the logistics of it; but that made it the most rewarding to see in the final cut. It’s a scene where one of our characters is in a period of self-discovery and finally finds themselves feeling free. That was very liberating to film.
Samara and I also had a lot of moments working together that we felt so fulfilled with what we were doing, and I felt such a connection to her while creating this, which I will cherish forever.
LENOXX: OOh, definitely my favorite moment of filming was when we were shooting Blush, it was the second day of filming and the end of the first weekend, we were at the top of this parking garage in downtown Seattle, the sun was setting and it was starting to get dark and we had the entire cast up on this ledge looking like the cast of an actual movie. We had just spent half an hour running around this community garden that was at the top of this parking garage, we had all had this burst of energy and were just being silly and goofing around and having so much fun. Gem and I and the rest of the crew were just looking at all of them up on that ledge and we all got really emotional. It was this moment where it all felt really real, like we were creating something really important. I had never had this feeling other than when I was making music but in that moment I knew this was what I wanted to do every single day for the rest of my life.
JONATHAN: Shooting the car scenes. We had scenes for mercury specifically where we had to set up a beautiful framed shot of two characters out the windows of a car under a bridge on the freeway, I had to put a car in cruise control and another car, with Gemma sticking out a sunroof, had to drive around us. If you get any audio from those shots in the moment you’d hear my exasperated confusion and questions while Samara directed over the phone while driving the other car.
LUNA: What’s the best part about collaborating with friends?
CROSS: In a scenario like we’ve had this year, the best part about it is that we were able to pull this production off while still being safe. We worked with friends on this because we trusted that everyone was being covid-safe, and that they would respect our covid- guidelines on set. Also the environment of everything was always amazing and so uplifting for everyone. We had many moments of everyone dancing and running around and finding moments of peace with eachother. It was a great enviroment for collaboration to be born.
LENOXX: I think Collaborating with friends is really cool because you learn about people in a way you never would without working with them in such an intimate and vulnerable way. You really get to see how people react to stress, to setbacks, to hard moments and you’re really in those moments together and then you get to pull it all off together. It’s really special, I think you get really close with the friends you work with like this, it’s almost like being parents, you have this connection of having created something that will be out in the world. Especially after being in quarantine for so long I think all of us were really needing some human connection and getting that while creating something we were all so in love with was pretty amazing. I feel like I have new best friends from this experience and I'm so grateful for that.
JONATHAN: In recent years I’ve tried to surround myself with people passionate about what they do. Working with friends is beautiful because you already have an inherent trust in what they do. If they love you and devote their time to you then you’re easily able to trust that they devote their time to what they love.
I loved planning projects for the future with everyone on the crew and cast. I loved letting them know that as we worked together that I was getting more and more excited to make other things with everyone involved
LUNA: As the year winds down and now this is out, what do you hope the upcoming months bring you all?
CROSS: In the next few months, I’m hoping to just keep moving along and creating projects that I’m passionate about. Bigger and better things. I just want to keep creating with the people I love, and making things we’re proud of, like “Jock.”
I’m currently working on a few more music video projects for other artists, which will be coming very soon. I know all of our cast and crew also have a lot of things in the works in their personal careers, so keep a lookout for that!
LENOXX: As the year winds down and for the upcoming months I honestly just want to keep working on creative projects, I want to direct more music videos and get better at operating a camera so I can be on that end of things too. I definitely want to work with this amazing all womxn crew on a project again and we’ve already started talking about that. I definitely think because we all worked so well together and love being around each other that you can expect much more from us in the future, especially with everyone now going back into quarantine, we will have a lot of time to plan for what will be next and honestly there’s already things in the works that i’m really excited about!
JONATHAN: Opportunities. Not in the way that I’ve normally hoped for it. I'm sure everyone wants opportunities after this year. But i'd love to settle back into the mindset of being able to turn down whatever opportunities aren’t best for me. This year has taught me that the perfect things can definitely be around the corner and that you have to choose wisely. I’d love to continue to put that into action.
CONNECT WITH ELI JONATHAN
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