If you are looking to get shit done with a DP who has super sexy credentials like:

former college football second string defensive tackle for a 0-9 D3 team

or… an eagle scout father of two that published a novel under a pseudonym

or how about…

Lost vision in his left eye in a ski crash and now sees the world in the same two dimensions as the cameras he works with?’

If you said yes to even one of these things— by god , hopefully, because we covered quite a range there— then I’m your man Jim Powers. 

Starting at the tender age of six shooting with the stellar Sony Betamovie I worked with my brother Steve blowing shit up, shooting Nazis, protecting the western homestead, and thwarting backcountry drug lords. Steve made it out of our childhood with only a few broken bones and an extremely burnt thumb from an explosion we ‘had to have’ for a shot made of model rocket engines. In regards to the ‘blind in one eye’ thing— I was 14, that led to a long time out of school— by myself. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, every day was spend filming and learning about shots and blocking. It was a fantastic way to cope, to develop and to have an excuse to dress as three different people for a single scene.

We progressed, and started making money shooting anything we could, anniversary parties, weddings, local commercials— eventually we started a pretty successful production company WFPCo. Winning a few awards (cough… cough…. 5 EMMYS) and working with some of the biggest brand names blah blah blah, who cares about commercials… LET’S TALK MOVIES!

Having that experience has led me to be able to travel the country shooting documentaries, shorts and features for some extremely talented directors and the absolute state of the art equipment. My drive/pasion/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is shooting movies— I just plain love it. I try my best to run a camera department that reflects that.

Being focused by being relaxed.

I’m generally a relaxed fella so it’s my thought that you can get better work done— more creatively— if there isn’t a threat the DP is going to lose his friggin’ mind.

My father taught me (in addition to a good handshake) that chance favors the prepared, and I interpret chance as being the lightening in a bottle on-set creative magic that only comes from weeks or months of preparation. Shot listing, tech tests, scouting, and a few long Coors light conversations with directors and department heads— that preparation is what allows the relaxed on set vibe possible by the way (Be Prepared is the Scout motto, see I’m tying it all together). The freedom to interpret story in a visual way while allowing inspiration to strike and maneuver and adjust comes from knowing what you’re up against (like watching game film for football prep, you keep your ‘head on a swivel’ because you’ve assessed almost all possibilities before hand). 

Ok, enough with the parenthesis and metaphors: let’s make some movies the way we did when we were kids, but with a little more prep, money, crew, and advanced know-how. Its a pro job, so I do my best to act like it— but also it’s the dream job.