SKYDIVING STUNT COORDINATION AND FREE FALL CINEMATOGRAPHY

Hello!  My name is Joe Jennings and I’m a skydiving stunt coordinator and free fall cinematographer in Los Angeles, California.  Basically, I help my clients to coordinate locations, aircraft, pilots, skydivers, riggers, equipment, pretty much anything that’s needed to tell the story. 

CINEMATOGRAPHY
My career started in 1995 when my skysurfing partner, Rob Harris, and I won two world championship titles and first place at the ESPN XGames. As a competition camera flyer, I was obsessed with framing, stability, and three dimensional flight, and I trained until these skills became part of my natural muscle memory. As a skydiving cinematographer I learned to focus on storytelling and on capturing the director’s vision, and that’s what motivates me today. On every production, I want the shot as much or more than anyone on set, and getting the shot is my greatest reward.

WHO AM I?  I have a unique skillset and lucked into an extraordinary life.  Flying camera, I’ve won 4 world championship titles and dozens of shiny awards including two Emmys only to look in the mirror and realize that I’m still just me.  I was born in the midwest and raised back east, including about 4 years on a commune.  I think I was 8 when my mom and dad divorced and moved away, so my brother, three sisters, and I were pretty much on our own for 2 years until my mom came back.  That was my normal and it wasn’t all bad, but I wouldn’t recommend it to aspiring parents.  By the time I graduated high school, we’d moved 9 times and when I was 19 I flew to California and I’ve been here ever since.  My wife’s family escaped Iran during the Islamic revolution (we all know how that turned out, Christian nationalists might want to take note), and they moved a lot when she was a kid, so when we bought our first house to start a family we decided to do things differently and we raised our kids in one house until they got their own apartments.  They are two incredible young men and I’m beyond proud of them, so it feels like we did a good job.

HOLLYWOOD!

I’ve had a terrific career.  In 1995, after 4 years of training, traveling, and competing with the world’s best skydivers, Hollywood opened up, and I remember wondering how many lives it would take to get this opportunity again, so I went for it and my life became an adventure I couldn’t have imagined as a kid, and I get to work with extraordinary people who also placed their bets on skydiving.

REALITY CHECK:  SAG rules call for hiring union stunt performers unless you have a compelling reason to hire someone who is non-union.  For me this was a dilemma because my background was competitive skydiving and I knew trained skydivers who were incredibly good, so when I landed jobs I felt compelled to recommend them.  As a result, I brought mostly non-union skydivers onto union jobs which is frowned on in the stunt community and horrible networking on my part, but my work is only as good as the skydivers I film and I couldn’t think of a better approach.  It’s pretty much expected that, to film an epic surf sequence, a producer will seek out expert surfers, not stunt people who know how to surf.  

BASEBALL AND SKYDIVING:  A great pitcher probably isn’t a great catcher, and most likely a great outfielder isn’t a great pitcher.  And in sport skydiving there are more specialties than there are positions on a baseball team, and no one person excels in every specialty.  In general, I think we get far better results when we let athletes play to their strengths.

WHERE THINGS ARE TODAY:  Skydiving is still perceived as a stunt, but it’s evolving into a variety of disciplines that are impossible to mimic or perform without real training, and it’s hard to argue that something can’t be done when there are dozens of posted videos of that exact thing being done.  Also, there are super accomplished skydivers who are becoming skydiving stunt coordinators, and skydiving and BASE jumping are all they do, so the overall quality of skydiving stunts is improving, and will continue to improve.  

Ultimately, when movie makers learn to see skydiving as a sport; like surfing, skiing, or even baseball with all of its positions and specialties, and not just as a “stunt”, then we’ll begin to see skydiving’s best athletes in the movies, and that will be a game changer.

OK, that’s it for the moment.  I’m happy to talk more about this anytime and you can contact me at joe@joejennings.com or 310.543.2222

Thank you!!