film & video - hugh jason wallace

bio

Hugh Jason Wallace was born in California but spent the early years of his life moving from Air Force base to Air Force base with his family. At age eight they finally settled down and he spent the rest of his formative years in Box Elder, South Dakota. Movie making began to be an interest for "Jason" in the sixth grade when he saw "An American Werewolf in London." Creating special make-up effects was his calling. For years he studied Rick Baker and Tom Savini, creating grizzly amputations and staining skin and clothing red with food coloring. Before long his family dentist and optometrist were involved in the game, supplying him with the ingredients to create anything his imagination would suggest. He needed to know what his effects would look like on film and began shooting eight millimeter for the sole reason of playing out his effects. Making the films themselves instantly became another passion. His High School senior composition instructor allowed the class to replace a single written assignment with a class video project. Jason directed the class in the creation of a horror film titled, "Lurking in the Shadows of the Moon." When asked what he thinks of the werewolf film laden with special effects and horrible image quality his face still flushes with embarrassment. Although the video sucked, Jason realized something even way back then. Video is cheap and film is expensive. After graduating high school and moving around a bit, Jason settled back down in South Dakota and started a small video production company as a way of cultivating his creativity while teaching himself the craft of filmmaking. It was during this period that he began to see the huge impact computers have had on media creation. The company quickly grew and so did its time requirements. After three years of working on the business aspect of owning a small business, he realized there was never time to work on filmmaking. As a result, he sold the business and moved to Minneapolis to attend film school full time. It was at Minneapolis Community and Technical College that he made the short film "Escape Attempt." While only a mid-program film, it has garnered many accolades and is currently showing nationally on the Independent Film Channel as part of IFP North Presents. Jason spent hours outside of class experimenting with ways in which the newer computer technologies will help the independent filmmaker on a tight budget. The beauty of "Escape Attempt" is that the workprint was edited and the sound mixed on his Pentium based home computer. The final film is much different than the original idea. Jason comments, "I hated the script but loved one scene, so I shot it in hopes of fixing the rest." As it turned out, totally trashing the original script and building a story around that shot became the final film. The shot in question is the birth from the baby's point of view. The thirty-second shot was originally supposed to open the film and now it slams it shut.

news & screenings

So,what's next? His final school project, a twenty-eight minute film (tentatively titled) "Winter Thunder," is a claustrophobic drama with horrific undertones and just the right volume of special make-up effects that began shooting in February 1999.

filmography