THE MASSES

The Masses is kind of a funny place, certainly not your typical office set-up. You won’t find hordes of drone-like office staff, and instead of a receptionist you’ll find a spunky pup named Vancouver there to bark hello. And though most of us float in and out of the office from day to day, there’s a handful of dedicated individuals you’ll find working tirelessly at headquarters from a.m. to p.m. Jack Richardson, our new executive producer and resident pull-up-bar acrobat, is one of them.   Though he’s only been with us a couple months, he’s already become an irreplaceable member of the Masses and we couldn’t be more excited to have him.

So just who is this guy that seems to be on top of everything?  Well, he’s not exactly your average LA producer.  As an undergrad at Arizona State University, he studied journalism. “I knew I didn’t want to do news, but that was the closest I could get to using cameras and editing projects,” Jack said.  Together with his college roommate, Dugan O’Neal (Doomsday Director and friend of The Masses), they created a few hilarious commercials and comedy shorts for their school’s TV station.

After college they migrated to the City of Angels, eager to make a name for themselves in the land where cinematic dreams come true.  After serving as production assistant on a job or two, he struck gold and quickly acquired one of the most coveted positions in the industry: he became a grip!  He wanted to learn from the best, to be in the trenches with the real visionaries.  And in our eyes, it’s partly this experience that makes him so valuable as a producer.  He’s not a suit who barks orders at people — he knows what he’s talking about, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get your show on the road.  On any given day he’ll book the job, find a crew, be your production assistant, and man the playback.  Jack does it all.

“I wanted to learn from the ground up in hopes that someday, if I had my own projects, I would intimately know what was going on and how to do it myself.  I wanted to know what it was really going to take to get the job done.”

Within his first six months in LA he joined the crew of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with whom he traveled the country for five years.  An immensely rewarding experience, it seems to have left quite a mark on our friend.  Years of watching entire communities come together for a common purpose–to build a house in only a few days–proved what can be truly be done when people put self-centered agendas aside and just help each other out.

In hindsight, maybe it’s this affinity for idealism that led him into producing.  During some down time he made an initial foray into producing, helping to make a stunning short that a friend had written called “Alice & The White Hair.”  The project, which also happened to be one of the first productions to use the Canon 5D, only fueled his growing desire to branch out.  After checking in with some old pals, long-time buddy and cinematographer David Myrick (yet another Masses friend) asked for his help producing a music video he was shooting.  Since Jack’s season at Extreme Makeover was about to wrap for the summer and the video was shooting in Big Sur (near his hometown of Salinas), he shrugged and said why not?

The video was for Fawnhawk’s “Hunter’s Hide,” directed by Masses veteran Benjamin Kutsko.  Jack, despite never having worked on a music video before, managed to pull some strings with Dave and Ben to ensure that everything was good-to-go on their tiny budget.  Everything was going great–that is, until Twilight came along.  You see, the treatment for the Fawnhawk video called for wolves.  And, though they initially had a connection to some very talented and very cheap actor wolves, the craze for teen werewolf sagas drove wolf values through the roof.  So they lost their wolves.  But Jack, determined as ever, refused to let those tweenagers kill this video.  They got creative and after a series of Facebook posts, emails, and some word of mouth, eventually stumbled upon The Shadowland Foundation, an educational non-profit that introduces wolves to children.  Though they weren’t technically actors, the wolves were well-trained enough to understand basic commands, such as “don’t eat the DP.”  So, after sending a most heartbreaking and desperate email, Jack managed to book the wolves for the video.  With a bit more convincing, Jack even found a place for the wolves to stay…in his parents’ house with the rest of the crew.

After the Fawnhawk project, Jack produced a few other videos (including 40 Day Dream) and one more season at Extreme Makeover before joining our team for good.  Now, with a desk chair to call his own, he’s become invaluable to us both as an EP and as a friend.  (Let’s just say that when we took a Masses field trip to Six Flags and found ourselves wandering aimlessly around the park, Jack was the one herding us safely onto the next coaster.)  And while he admits that he hasn’t even scratched the surface of this career, we appreciate the hard work he’s put in to get here and all the sacrifices he’s made for The Masses.

“I never went to film school, I’ve just been out there physically doing it–just working on sets.  Initially for me, producing was more about just trying to make sure my friends got their projects off the page and helping them finish things because I knew how talented they were.  Whatever I can do, I’ll sacrifice some sleepless nights and run up my phone bill to make sure my friends are doing alright.”

And that’s an honest, true glimpse at the way Jack really functions.  Like the rest of us, he believes that there is possibility in the collective ideal and we’re confident that he’s the perfect (if not only) man for the job.  Welcome to the family, Jack!