ABOUT JESSE
As a director, producer, photographer, cinematographer, and editor, Jesse Tunison has been working in the creative world for most of his life. Based on Hawai`i’s Big Island, Jesse maintains a set of creative standards that consistently provide clients with amazing content and projects that allow businesses, brands, and people to flourish.
Being self-taught as a pre-teen in an era before YouTube, Jesse began his informal training by reverse-engineering creative concepts and problems. “Knowing how to take something apart and piece it back together again is probably where I feel the most at home,” states Tunison. “Watching creatives at work has greatly informed me of how to approach many things… like a bad weather day, technical issues, or just finding a random balance for things that need to be done just to serve everyones collective goal and vision…. That is what producing ultimately is for me, it’s problem solving.”
Jesse is not shy about saying that “…many things clog the creative process wherever you are, let alone in Hawai`i`.” The state of Hawai`i certainly has its challenges being the most remote land mass in the world… “Logistics and workflow… I wish I got paid every time I had to say it. Brands, businesses, and people are always looking for ways to standout in a world where everyone has a camera; Hawai`i can help with that, but finding a trusted creative voice for everyone to unify around is the thing that ultimately sets the tone for what I do, and then everything else somehow magically falls into place.”
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One of the key issues that Jesse has had to work with is building budgets for a bare bones crew of one to five, while making the production quality feel like a crew of twenty was on set. “Knowing how to shoot multi-cam with one camera has been the rhythm of my working life, at this point I think heartbeat runs at 24 fps.”
Today, Jesse continues to make his services accessible to everyone in need of it. His work spans across most photographic genres, both commercial and personal, and his commercial filmed works have ranged from TV and social media spots, to tutorials, pitch films, narrative projects, documentaries, virtual productions, and more.
“I love to create imagery that is filled with light, color, and atmospheres that meld together and feel similar to a gentle but heightened sense of reality.” Jesse’s editing process has always leaned on utilizing the full power of a camera’s sensor. “I work with the same file types as everyone else does, but I usually spend two or three more hours at minimum to better find the limits of what an image file could offer me in the digital darkroom. People talk about photographers as being shapers of light, I prefer to be a shaper of color.”
The most important advice I can give future photographers and filmmakers is to approach the world with an open mind, a creative focus, the desire to maintain healthy communication skills, knowing how to build on the reality that has been placed before you, and the consistency of knowing that you have plenty of coffee and Dr. Pepper hidden in all of your gear bags.
