Storytelling is attention, practiced.

I'm J.J. I make cinematic short films under the name Jardeis, and I'm a sophomore at Duke University, where I'm designing my own major through Program II around filmmaking, storytelling, creativity and technology. Those four things are not separate subjects to me, and I got tired of studying them as though they were.

I started making things because I wanted to understand people better. A camera is a good excuse to pay attention: to sit somewhere longer than is comfortable, to ask a second question, to notice the moment right before someone decides what to say.

Last summer I spent two months living in Colombia through DukeEngage, learning Spanish and living inside a culture that was not mine. For the first weeks I could not say what I meant, so I watched instead. That experience changed how I think about storytelling: that a story is not something you arrive with, it is something you earn by staying long enough to see clearly.

Since then, travel, culture and human emotion have become the center of the work. I care about the small unglamorous moments that carry more than the big ones: the pause, the glance, the hand on a doorframe.

Alongside my own films I work professionally, making commercial and cinematic work for brands and startups. It's taught me discipline: a brief, a deadline, and the responsibility of making something that has to work as well as feel good.

Long term, I want to direct films. Everything on this site is a step toward that, made publicly and in order.