[INTERVIEW] ‘Paradise Man II’ Director, Jordan Michael Blake (Sundance Animator Spotlight Series #4)

Next up in our series interviewing the Sundance animators, we have a conversation with Jordan Michael Blake director of the short ‘Paradise Man II’. 

What was your journey like in getting to a point where you actually made a film or made films? Did you go to film school?

I did go to film school, but, the next step was I was really into gadgets as a kid. Like Palm Pilots were a big deal at the time. And I thought that idea was so cool, or just anything that was gadgety I was into. So I asked for a camera. It was like a $200 Hi8 camcorder I got for Christmas one year. And after I got it, I was obsessed with it, and I would basically just make spoofs with my cousins.

In high school, I sort of ended up being like one of the film guys… And then people started to know who I was, basically, just because I was making those movies. That became so fun. I’d just hang out with all my best friends, put on silly costumes, run around with the camera and then people at school knew who I was a little bit more. So that’s kind of an intoxicating combo, I think.

This Paradise Man II, you developed during the pandemic right?

Yeah. It was the tail end of the pandemic, but it was definitely, it was being conceived while I was still living sort of the pandemic lifestyle.

…In my case, because I was stuck inside going on these long road trips in my truck, which is still, you know, inside, but you’re still alone, still solitary. But I was traveling all around looking at stuff and it was nice.

The movie is made out of animated GIFs, is that right? Explain that. What’s going on?

I was part of this editing collective fully in the pandemic that was called Racer Trash. And basically the idea of that collective was to take a popular movie that already exists and then divvy it up into essentially ten minute segments and have a bunch of editors re-edit that segment in whatever way they wanted to and then put the whole movie back together and stream it live on Twitch so that people had something to watch during the pandemic. And it was super fun and everybody was super talented. And basically I just started repurposing stuff a lot.

People were using footage in ways I hadn’t seen before and using screen recordings of their computers, manipulating the footage that you were seeing them make the segment while you were watching the segment and just being adventurous with the way that they were retooling everything that I started to think like, what if I did a similar thing? But instead of taking 10 minutes of a movie that already exists, I took an entire stock animated GIF website and used those to… Reappropriate those to tell my own story?

Do you consider yourself an animator?

It’s a little loaded just because I respect animation so much. It’s new for me. It’s very exciting and that’s where my creative efforts are being focused right now. I come from live action, but I always would have loved to make animations. And I made some animations in college, but I just don’t know how to draw. So this was a way for me to be able to do something I’ve always wanted to do even though I don’t know how to draw.

Did you freak out when you got the call from Sundance? 

It was really surreal. I danced around in the street. I was driving and it felt like it was unsafe to drive… So I pulled over as soon as the call was done, and I started dancing around the street. And one guy who drove by who had no idea what was going on gave me a big thumbs up because he could tell I was stoked. Yeah, that was really awesome.

For more of our conversation with Jordan check out the full interview below. If you get a chance to see ‘Paradise Man II’ at the Sundance Film Festival, let us know what you think.