EVERETT – This movie mogul’s high-rise office doesn’t look out over the Hollywood sign, and it starts feeling cramped if more than two or three people show up.
But Jonathan Holbrook is a full-time filmmaker, a common dream that few actually translate into a living.
The owner of Studio H Filmworks has a few feature films under his belt and is making commercials, corporate videos and Web sites.
“This is the bread and butter,” he said of his commercial work. “This is what helps finance movies in the future and pays the bills.”
And filming commercials doesn’t mean abandoning all aspirations of art, he said. He’s setting out to make commercials that look a bit classier than the typical local spots on TV.
Holbrook, 36, didn’t automatically feel a pull toward making films when he was younger. At first, it was just doing anything artistic.
“I’d write, draw … I did a lot of cartooning in high school. I just liked to create, and I didn’t know how to make a living out of it,” he said.
Then, when he was 18 years old, he saw “Blue Velvet,” the strange and striking 1986 film by director David Lynch. That made up Holbrook’s mind: He’d create through film.
Improving digital filmmaking technology has made that ambition easier, faster and cheaper than ever, he said.
Holbrook went to Everett Community College and a University of Washington class for filmmaking to learn the technical aspects. Other than that, he said, “I’m basically self-taught.”
His made his first feature film, “The Temporaries,” in 1996, an effort he describes as “experimental.”
In 2000, the year he officially started Studio H, he made a film called “Missing Chelsea.”
His first all-original feature, “Customer 152,” came in 2004. In it, a financially challenged man gets a strange, black credit card, only to be chased by well-dressed phantoms. That film won the Best Narrative Feature award at the 2005 NW Projections Film Festival in Bellingham.
As he was making these films, Holbrook kept his day jobs: first, as a FedEx driver and then as a stay-at-home dad. Finally, last year, he felt ready to open an office and make Studio H a full-time venture.
His list of commercial clients has grown, including Everett’s Village Theatre, Imagine Children’s Museum, Seattle Mortgage and Providence Everett Medical Center. He’s working on a commercial for State Roofing as well.
In addition to the commercial and Web work, Studio H also transfers old home movies and film to DVD and can craft memoir videos for memorials, reunions and other events.
He said doing commercial work and corporate videos is actually more similar to making his own films than he first thought.
“With feature filmmaking, you have to worry more about capturing an audience. With a corporate video, you may have the audience, but it still needs to be entertaining. It’s kind of the same,” he said.
And he still makes time for working on strictly artistic movies. Right now, he’s helping an intern from Henry Cogswell College’s digital arts program make a short film based on an original script.
“It’s really gratifying at the end when you can express the ideas you want to portray,” he said.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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