Have a physical practice — Art making is an energetic happening. Creation is an energetic event. We are energetic beings and animal creation machines. This is physical machinery creating energetic patterns. These bodies are our tools, and we need them to be strong. This is hard work! I have come to depend so heavily on my yoga practice for my mental and physical wellbeing. It’s something to fall back on when other success and practices aren’t flowing: “at least I’m taking care of myself in this way.” It is also such a wonderful example and analogy of using our energy to manifest physical change and material: how long that creation process can take and how much effort it may take. It took me a long time to figure out what my physical practice was — I tried a lot and most didn’t stick. Find one that aligns with who you are, what you enjoy and become obsessed with it.
As a part of our series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became An Artist” I had the pleasure of interviewing Jake Saner.
Jake Saner is the cinematographer of the coming-of-age feature film Good Girl Jane, directed by Sarah Elizabeth Mintz, and starring Andie MacDowell, Rain Spencer, Patrick Gibson and Odessa A’Zion. The film won the Best U.S. Narrative Feature Award and Rain Spencer won the Best Performance Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. Good Girl Jane is available to stream beginning October 8, 2024.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
My childhood definitely had a profound impact on my artistic journey and career. When I was 3, my parents bought property with two other families (friends from college) in Chicago. Three single family units with a large yard connecting them. We called it The Yard (and still do). I’m an only child but within this little community there were five of us kids. When I was 6, our parents created a small family cooperative school for us kids to attend. Our parents each taught a subject. My parents, my dad a performance artist, sculptor and carpenter and my mom a printmaker and artist-book maker taught art-creation classes. Surrounding this school and Yard blossomed a vibrant community. This community taught me the importance and value of true collaboration which has been integral in finding my place as a cinematographer.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
Our family cooperative school had a yearly unit we called “U-Pick Units” in which we were each able to choose what to study and do an in-depth dive into one subject or project for a month or more. I always chose animation. My dad had a Zenith VHS camcorder with a 1/4 second animation function built in. I would spend countless hours making claymation, hand drawn and paper animations. When I was 9, I made an animation called “The Bookless Planet,” about a little paper boy with blue-tack joints lamenting that his world had no books on it. This was the late 90s, so we had no editing software and the entire piece had to be done in-camera. My friends from The Yard were my crew. I have a distinct memory of us all gathered around the TV recording our single take soundtrack overdub pass, one of us with a mini-Casio keyboard for the score, little percussive instruments for foley and me doing the several lines of dialogue all gathered around one mic. My parents suggested I submit this film to the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. It got accepted and I received a “Certificate of Excellence” which I think was a special award they created for me. I had to go up on stage and accept it which was terrifying. I remember saying, “I don’t know what to say,” as my attempt at a casually humble turn-of-phrase, but I think it was taken as that I literally didn’t know what words to say. So, I suppose I flubbed my first award speech. This experience allowed me to accept myself as a filmmaker at a very young age. I never had to question whether or not I was an artist, whether or not that was a valid career path for me. I think this is a place of privilege that I have since become so incredibly grateful for. Art was an ever-present underlying structure on which I built my life. I think the flip side of this privilege is that I wasn’t necessarily drawn to art through a primal need to express and heal. And I didn’t have to fight for my right to create. I’m still learning how to use my art in this way.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The stories that interest me most often involve what one might call serendipity, in which seemingly adverse situations present unexpected paths toward something beautiful. A simple example: I’m currently in Los Angeles for our premiere of Good Girl Jane. I rented a car for my stay here, specifically excited to blast music while driving around town. But the stereo in my rental has a blown-out right speaker that rattles whenever any bass comes through. At first, this was extremely frustrating to me because it altered my expectation of something I was excited for. But of course, I had to accept it as the situation I was in. Realizing that the rattle didn’t come through when people were speaking, I found myself listening to a wonderful podcast of a gentle voiced Buddhist monk which happened to be exactly what I needed to start my morning.
I think this often applies to filmmaking. For example, after years of working to get the film financed and green-lit, we started our four-week production of Good Girl Jane in March of 2020. Halfway through our shoot, we shut down with the rest of the country to shelter in place. Coupled with the global uncertainty of that year, there was another layer of devastation at the potential of losing a creation so dear to us all. Through intense effort, we managed to resume production a year later when it was safe to do so. The twist is that this hiatus allowed us to assess what was working, adjust what wasn’t and explore the footage we had shot. It also gave us a new start from a production standpoint, in which to scout locations and plan. The newly invigorated appreciation for many aspects of community and creation (which we, perhaps, took for granted before Covid) imbued the production with a vibrance that, in retrospect, was crucial to the energy of the film. Our core team operated from an underlying certainty that, in the end, this pause would only strengthen the work. I’m grateful to have collaborators who share this mentality because it can cut through periods of doubt and frustration when things inevitably don’t go as planned. In a medium like film, which involves countless moving pieces and collaborators, there is only so much control you really have, making the ability to adapt so crucial. Beautiful things happen when we embrace challenge as an opportunity to grow and shift.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I’m beyond excited to release the feature film I shot, “Good Girl Jane.” It will be streaming this fall. It is written and directed by Sarah Elizabeth Mintz and inspired by her own high school experience in LA. The film is a glimpse inside the life of Jane, a young high schooler who falls for a charming yet manipulative older drug dealer and becomes entangled in his dealing operation. The film explores isolation, addiction, depression and the complex healing power of human connection. I think what sets this film apart from others in the genre is Sarah’s unique filmmaking approach. Her unwavering search for truth and authenticity permeated the entire production and set us up with a cast and environment that fully supported her vision. As most of the core team’s first feature, it was a unique and impassioned creative experience in which I learned so much. I’m shooting a short in Italy this winter with another dear collaborator, Walé Oyejide, which I’m super excited about. I’ve also recently been directing/shooting/editing music videos for some close musician friends.
Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?
I’ve had the great privilege of traveling the world shooting with people of all walks of life. It has been very impactful to interact with those most different from me: Flying kites with a young vibrant boy we street-cast in a small village in Burkina Faso for Wale Oyejide’s “Bravo, Burkina.” Listening to stories of women working the tea fields in Sri Lanka for a documentary directed by Vanessa Black. Sharing a spliff with an Indian Prince behind a car in the palace parking lot while attending the royal Diwali party in Jaipur, India. Climbing a through the misty Swiss alps with dear friend and rapper Lauren DeClasse and a full 16mm film package. I’m grateful that my career has placed me in so many environments and allowed me to hear the stories of so many fascinating people.
Where do you draw inspiration from? Can you share a story about that?
I think the short answer is my collaborators. One of the most fundamental jobs of a director is to inspire — to ignite the creativity of their collaborators. Great directors do this instinctively. On Good Girl Jane, Sarah conjured so much excitement and dedication in her collaborators that when we resumed production after Covid, we had all our original cast and something like 95 percent of our crew locked-in a year later.
I love source material (a script, a song, a photo, a piece of text). I’m inspired by constraints and framework. For example, on Good Girl Jane, Sarah and I landed on a simple constraint that shaped all of production: cut as little as possible. The film is comprised of long choreographed handheld takes. Aside from several intentional montage moments, each scene is essentially one shot. Removing excess options through constraints can create space to explore the depth of a moment. Without cutting, all our cast and crew were required to be fully present in the scene which created a unique tone in the film.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I aim to show the beauty of simple human connection — to explore our intertwined relationship with this earth and each other and to share our individual stories of change, release, growth, and transformation. It’s important to me that my work supports this mission.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
1. Root your artistic practice firmly in your heart. Let your heart guide you. Film especially is such an intersection between art and commerce. I’ve experienced my art turning into commerce. There have been periods in my career where I tried so hard to be “that commercial thing,” that I started leading my process from the place of an aesthetic or brand. When you do this for too long, the root of your creation can shift from being firmly centered in your heart to grasping for footing in the ideas and imagery of others. This is a short-term strategy. We all know the kind of work/ “content” that comes from this occurrence. Of course, it will be necessary to explore all different aesthetics, and we must be malleable in this field. If you can root your process in your own center, your branches can explore anywhere, any theme, any aesthetic, any technique, any brand guideline and still maintain your essence. This requires familiarity and understanding of your heart, your mission, your core. Start with that exploration and let it evolve as it most certainly will. Given the increasingly vast amount of extreme talent in this field, it becomes more apparent that a true perspective is what matters. Aesthetics, trends and even techniques come and go swiftly and shouldn’t become attached to your identity.
2. Have fun — This is a simple one. It’s only a movie after all. Filmmaking creates particularly high intensity environments and can be an incredibly stressful art-form. Remember to enjoy the process and keep things in perspective.
3. Share often — Don’t hold on to your work. Art becomes powerful when it interacts with the world. No matter how impactful and cathartic an artistic expression can be for the artist, its function is also how it interacts with others. In my mind, art is about movement and growth. It’s a chemical, energetic reaction when art is released into the world. This reaction sets things in motion, within the artist and within community/world. These reactions play out over time. So don’t wait too long. I’m thinking of the lengthy list of unfinished songs on old hard drives from a decade or more ago. If I had been bold enough to introduce these expressions to the world, who knows what pathways that reaction could have created for me and my process.
4. Have a “present” creative practice that is not your career/craft. Filmmaking is a long and complex art-form involving countless logistics, collaborations and inevitably some amount of money. It’s easy to feel like we’re waiting and waiting for the moment to be creative, waiting for the green light, for the shoot day, for the setup, only to explode into our creative space for a relatively short period of time. But access to our creative flow takes practice. I think it’s important to also exercise our creativity in present and low-pressure environments to maintain and strengthen our connection to it. For me this is music, photography, drawing, writing, playing with Legos. These are creative practices that are instantaneous, meditative, and relatively inexpensive and can allow us to sit in the healing power of creation while waiting for filmmaking’s explosive creative intensity.
5. Have a physical practice — Art making is an energetic happening. Creation is an energetic event. We are energetic beings and animal creation machines. This is physical machinery creating energetic patterns. These bodies are our tools, and we need them to be strong. This is hard work! I have come to depend so heavily on my yoga practice for my mental and physical wellbeing. It’s something to fall back on when other success and practices aren’t flowing: “at least I’m taking care of myself in this way.” It is also such a wonderful example and analogy of using our energy to manifest physical change and material: how long that creation process can take and how much effort it may take. It took me a long time to figure out what my physical practice was — I tried a lot and most didn’t stick. Find one that aligns with who you are, what you enjoy and become obsessed with it.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
We each have moments in our life in which we are deeply connected with ourselves, our surroundings, our loved ones, our planet. Be it moments of deep joy, sorrow, care, generosity, empathy, stillness, discovery or change (the list is endless and that is the point). Moments that necessitate a connection with truth and vulnerability: let’s call them moments of presence. The tone of everyone’s version of presence is different and there are so many paths toward peace.
Making art from the perspective of our individual experience of presence both strengthens our own understanding and familiarity with that space and illustrates our unique paths toward change and growth to others. I think the fun comes in connecting those experiences. Collaboration. Sharing art, stories, heart, vulnerability and listening to others share. Drawing pathways between them. It starts to paint a picture of what this world could be. And gives us new maps of potential for our own peace and presence.
These are the conversations I want to have with my collaborators. What have been your paths toward presence, toward peace, toward ecstasy? What happens when we start to integrate our individual experiences together? Given film’s collaborative nature, it can create unique, complex and powerful energetic works. I’m interested in exploring this with intention. I’m interested in talking more openly as a community about the power of our creation to inspire, build, shape, illustrate these moments and states of presence, peace. This is something I think about a lot, and I know I’m not alone in this. I think this is a movement that is well along its way and ready to blossom.
We have been blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she just might see this.
I’m going to slightly sidestep this question and say what I really want is to be sitting at breakfast with my next new collaborator. Perhaps a great and visionary director eager to express their inner world, tell their story, craft their dream. Or a musician describing to me the imagery they see when they sing. Or just a new friend. A new teacher. Reach out, let’s create!
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
Instagram: @jpsaner
Cinematography Website: jakesaner.com
Directing Website: jakesanerfilms.com
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Jake Saner: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became An Artist was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.