Check Out Jude McKinnies’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jude McKinnies

Hi Jude, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve been interested in various forms of storytelling for as long as I can remember. As a child, imaginative play was one of my main outlets; I’d construct elaborate fantasy worlds with my brother based off a blend of various stories that influenced us – Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and others. Hours and hours were spent developing these worlds: building Lego fortresses and cities, drawing detailed maps, compiling lists detailing the forces of various fictional militaries… mostly, however, we would simply tell each other stories back and forth, adding daily to our fictional universe.

This interest in storytelling did not express itself in film format for quite some time, until, when I was around 10, I became obsessed with Lego stop-motion films. I never completed any large stop-motion projects, and the quality of those I did complete was probably orders of magnitude lower than others my age; however, my imagination was still just as large, and my brother and I planned out an expansive trilogy of fantasy stop-motion films that we planned to create but never executed beyond the first few scenes.

Sadly, my aspirations regarding stop-motion filmmaking never got close to fulfillment. However, my attention eventually turned instead to live-action filmmaking. It began with a couple amateur projects with goofy wigs and Nerf guns shot solely in the apartment that I was living in at the time. After my brother and I discovered a generic video editing software that came with some basic 2D muzzle flare effects that could be easily composited onto footage we shot, we felt extremely powerful. Using a phone camera, we threw together a short 3-minute “film,” chock-full of the newly discovered muzzle flare and barrel smoke effects (at the time, we thought it was fantastic, though I cringe when looking back at it).
We decided to up our game for the next project by using a real camera – despite this, however, about half of the shots still came out shaky or blurry. We also used “realistic-looking” airsoft guns (with glaringly obvious orange tips) and filmed an exciting action sequence involving much running through the woods and even a little bit of fake blood. (At this point, my family had moved to Conifer, providing an excellent film location right outside our front door). With some royalty-free music we found on the internet and many, many more muzzle flare effects, we produced a 15-minute long film. It was still fairly low in quality overall, but it had some moments of great cinematography and was a big step up from previous enterprises.

It was around this time (summer of 2021) that my interest in film became more serious. Fast forwarding to the fall of 2022: for my senior year of high school, I applied for Warren Tech’s video production program and was accepted into it. During my year at Warren Tech, I was able to work with real, professional equipment and software – but more importantly, I was able to collaborate with a group of like-minded peers who were also interested in indie film. There were people way above my level of expertise, as well as those below my level, but the environment of the classroom was always cooperative. Those who were more experienced with any given skill would help others to become better at it, and we were each able to participate in various roles on the film crew, getting a sense of what suited us best.
By the end of the year, I had produced several of my own short films that I was proud of, as well as collaborating on several more films with other students. One of my films won a category in the end-of-year film festival known as “The Pie Awards” held within our school. Another film was accepted into the CU Denver film festival, where I and two of my friends were able to see it on the big screen. While these successes were encouraging for me, my primary excitement was that I was making more and more (and better and better) films.

Since graduating in 2023, I’ve been working on a more ambitious, longer film project that still only about 25% complete. As I’ve been taking college classes full-time, I’ve realized that it’s a lot more difficult to organize and execute shoot days compared to my time in Warren Tech where I had 15+ dedicated hours every week to work on film projects. However, my passion for film has not died down in the slightest, and I will undoubtedly continue to make films in the future. Whether it eventually becomes a career for me or simply remains a hobby, I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to use visual media to tell stories. It means the world to me.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s definitely been a bumpy ride getting to where I am today, and I expect that I will never stop experiencing struggles and difficulties.

One of the major issues I’ve faced is a mismatch between the scale of my ambitions for a film project and the reality of executing it. The current film project I’m working on is a great example of this. I initially wrote a 20-page script for the film in January of 2022 and expected to complete it before the end of the semester. However, after having several peers look over the story, I realized I had to expand the script. It ended up being over 30 pages, and I didn’t finish revising it until March.
Casting was another long and arduous process, as it was the first project I intended to acquire “real” actors for rather than using classmates, as I wanted a fairly high level of realism, and there was a significant amount of dialogue in the script which would require emotive performances. I didn’t end up finalizing my cast decisions until after my graduation in May.
After this, I had to find locations. The genre of the script was part psychological thriller, part mystery, and part dystopian science fiction, so I needed run-down urban locations to film in. Unfortunately, I found that location scouting was extremely difficult, and I had to set aside about half of the scenes to film later once I had found safe and accessible urban locations. For the rest of the scenes, scheduling became a major issue, and filming ended up dragging through the summer and into the fall given unfortunate schedule conflicts with different actors.
By the time the Colorado winter season came along, I had completed far less outdoor filming than I hoped to, but there was nothing to be done, as the locations we were filming at would be too cold and snowy to film at (besides looking completely different). Meanwhile, I had brought on two different location scouts who both left the project with no success finding locations. Between these issues and the course load of my college classes, I’ve had to pause production on this project, though I hope to resume filming in the late spring or early summer.
A project that I had initially expected to be over in a couple months has now taken over a year and is still incomplete. While this is discouraging and frustrating for me at times, I think it also has taught me an important lesson – not to be over-ambitious. Planning an elaborate story is very easy, but execution is much, much harder. While I do have some great and complex story ideas that I’d love to film, I have been learning to put the bigger ones on the back burner and wait until I have gained more experience, while keeping my film projects smaller and more manageable in the present. With enough time, networking, and experience, I am sure I will be able to realize my grander visions in the future.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My focus is in film and video production. I’ve participated in various roles on indie film crews, helping with cinematography, editing, VFX, scoring and sound design, and even acting. However, my main passion is writing and directing, likely because of my interest in storytelling.
There are a few things that I’m most proud of as defining features of my work. The first of these that comes to mind is probably the “quirkiness”. of my writing. I try to include some element of the absurd in every project I work on – I think this makes for good storytelling. This is perhaps most obvious in “Woodward,” a short film I made during my first semester at Warren Tech, which is about a lumberjack who is best friends with an anthropomorphic log.
I also like to get an aspect of the complexities and oddities of human psychology into the stories that I write. This has expressed itself most directly in the film project that I am currently working on, which focuses around the concept of dreaming, and was inspired in part by the “Butterfly Dream” parable of the ancient Chinese philosopher 莊子 (Zhuangzi, a.k.a Chuang Tzu).

Who else deserves credit in your story?
The first people who deserve credit for my work and successes are definitely my parents. They have been actively supportive and encouraging through every one of my film projects, often causing great inconvenience to themselves to help me. I undoubtedly would not have reached this point without their support. My grandparents have also been extremely supportive, allowing me to crash at their house at ungodly hours of the night after filming, among many other things.
I also owe so much of my success to my teacher, Jon White, who pushed me to excel in each one of my film projects. He was an amazing teacher and so much more, caring foremost not about the content he taught but about the students he taught.
Lastly, I have to thank Brayden Fox for allowing me to be part of his amazing film projects and for helping me with all my practical effects needs on my own, and Anthony Cozza, for providing an excellent soundtrack for one of my films.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kermanred.wixsite.com/jude-mckinnies-1
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eclipseproductionsjm/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jude-mckinnies-44b9172b2
• Twitter: https://x.com/guangxinoodles
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@judem6064?si=K8aNlddYuFrJgbmj