The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has seen a growth in the creative industry of late with high-profile projects opting to set up shop here in North Texas.
As well as this, multiple local creatives have been able to establish themselves and flourish in the area.
One such Fort Worth-based creative who has made a name for himself in recent years is Jared L. Christopher - director of Titletown, TX and Texas 6.
Christopher spoke with KRLD about his career, experiences so far, and what it's like filming in North Texas.
What is it that got you into filmmaking?
I'd always had a passion for it, but nobody in my family was in entertainment at all so I never really saw it as a viable career path, it was just something I was always interested in. I took some film classes in college, but ironically I was an engineer at Bell Helicopter for five years before realizing that there was just no way that I could do that for the rest of my life and be happy. I guess, more than anything I attribute a lot of my courage to my wife because she gave me the leeway to do this. When I quit my job at Bell Helicopter I was working on the V-22 program at Alliance Airport with a little 18-month-old son and a daughter on the way - and I quit my job and took a part-time gig at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram by working in their video department with the idea that I was going to turn that into an opportunity for myself to pursue what I really loved which was filmmaking and documentary filmmaking specifically. And [I] more or less launched their video department right as newspapers were dying and subscriptions were being canceled left and right, advertising dollars were disappearing and they were just looking for a new way to generate revenue, and I said 'Hey, let's get into the documentary space.' So, I did a show called Titletown, Texas about the Aledo football program and that...I guess nobody in journalism was really doing documentary in that way - most [of the] video that newspapers were doing were more press conferences or interviews, things like that. And so, we won every journalism award there was to win for that series, and that opened the door for me to really have conversations with people out on the West Coast who said 'Hey, what could you really do with more money [and] a bigger canvas.' At that point, I was able to leave the Star-Telegram and start my own production company. So, here we are about five years later, and multiple projects in the works and it seems to be working out.
Would you say that level of perseverance is particularly key if you're to succeed?
I think so because, especially in the arts, there's no defined path for success - whatever success means to you. To me, it was simply to be able to make enough money to pay my bills and to support my family through my art. And in order to get to that place in a non-traditional career like an artist would consider themselves...with engineering you get your set raise every year, there's a path to management - that's a typical trajectory for most jobs out of college. But, as an artist there's just no path, you have to create your own. And, you hear a lot of people say 'it's all about who you know,' and I tell people that I talk to, a lot of young people that are wanting to get into this business, I say 'it's definitely a part of it, who you know is a part of it, but it's also just committing to your craft and just hammering away at it so that your skills are so sharp that whenever the right people enter your life, you can capitalize on those relationships because you're prepared and your talent matches your determination at that point.' It's that old saying: 'When preparation meets opportunity, that's where success finds you.'"
Why do you like to focus so much on this area, and what is it about North Texas and its athletes that interests you?
I was a college baseball player and high school football player and [had] just grown up in sports. And I think initially that was, you know the old saying: 'You write or you tell the stories that you know.' And I think what people mean when they say that really is [it's] what you understand, it's not necessarily your story literally told, it's what you can understand the nuances of, the emotional arcs of. And so, sports for me had always been something that were a part of my life and so I understood how analogous they were to the hero's journey and the types of stories that you look for, especially in documentary is you look for something that has that built-in narrative structure, and sports definitely have that - every time you're watching a game you're watching this three-act structure unfold. And so I knew if I was going to start in this world of sports: A - I understood it emotionally, I understood what it meant to people and communities and kids and fathers and sons and all those things, but also it had that beautiful built-in structure that I could lean on as I was trying to create more character-driven narrative arcs. And so, that's where I started and as you start to have some success in that genre then more opportunities present themselves in the same space. And so, I wouldn't say that that's where I intend to stay, as far as the sports world is concerned, as a matter of fact, I have a couple of projects I'm working on with the Innocence Project of Texas right now, and so the goal is to branch out and I'm always just looking for characters. I always tell people 'I'm not telling stories about ideas or concepts or themes, I'm telling stories about people.'
Is it particularly important to you to focus on the individual rather than their background?
It is. I feel like this current project I'm working on, I was following the University of Kentucky's basketball program which is the absolute apex, pinnacle, the highest level of college basketball in the country. And their head coach John Calipari is known worldwide for what he does for kids, sending them to the NBA. And this is just an example of what I like to do [which] is I like to take people like him, which you think you know that seem almost like a celebrity in many respects and humanize them and help you understand who they are just as a dad, or as a son even - I got to meet his father. And then conversely, I'm really just fascinated with people and so I like to find people that some may say are forgotten or the spotlight has evaded and elevate them to a level that you would never imagine. So, a lot of times you'll see characters in my stories that are on the fringes that most people don't even know exist, and that's one thing about Texas 6 that fascinated me the first time I went out to Strawn, the head coach Dewaine Lee said 'You know, my kids work every bit as hard as the kids in the metroplex and all the big schools, but nobody knows we exist out here.' And I said 'Well, let's remedy that.' And that's why I was so drawn to them [because] he was absolutely correct - they do work every bit as hard, they have every bit as much success in their own world as the kids at the Aledo's and the Southlake's, but to his point, nobody outside of their community knew they existed. So it's fun for me to get to shed some light on some places and some people that otherwise wouldn't get any of the spotlight.
Christopher agreed that filmmaking in the region is on the rise, and attributed much of this to technological advancements making it easier for people to access the tools and skills necessary to succeed.
Looking ahead, Christopher has a number of projects in development. His aforementioned project involving the University of Kentucky has been shot over the past eight months and will soon be coming to a conclusion as he follows two NBA Draft hopefuls. He said this work may well end up in the format of a feature-length documentary rather than a series, as he follows these players from the moment they step on campus to the moment they leave for the next step.
Alongside this, Christopher has been working with the Innocence Project of Texas on and off for the past three years and he has a scripted series in the works that is "set in the world of women's college basketball" that has been bought by Paramount+.
Whether or not his career takes him to pastures new or if he will remain in DFW is an unknown. Christopher admitted that his wife "would probably tell you that she would love to at some point move west," however, he said if it were up to him he'd be "in Fort Worth until the end," admitting that he loves Texas and that the DFW are will always be his home.
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