JBL Films

02/07/2026

I enjoyed being a part of this project. Looking forward to more shoots with Jens and Ray. Thanks Matt Haesche for your help

09/12/2025

Happy to announce our short environmental film project: "Sand & Sediment Beach Testing Post Palisades Fire" is an official selection at the Awareness Film Festival. Please follow Coastal Alliance , our partner in this project. It was designed to be an educational, social media awareness building informational film and recently won an award at the Patagonia Film festival and been requested and selected for another.

The mission of the Awareness Film Festival is bringing awareness and to open eyes to some of our world's pressing issues: Ecological, Political, Health/Well ...

12/30/2024

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
From JBL Films and crew.
Keep us in mind for documentary, corporate, promos and spots

06/29/2024

The Carmel California Shoot for "Jensen's Still at It" is wrapped! Editing has started. Please keep sharing this link or this post for me and chip in if you can, there may be something to learn here about the art of playing and teaching music and maybe living life, too. https://gofund.me/46a41b5d- Special thanks to Carleton Macy for letting us invade his home and vision in writing new music that drew John back to the west coast.

06/20/2024

We are getting support and sharing from John's network, my network and more for this little project. Thank you all who have donated and shared (see below) By the way - did you all know also we're getting funding support from Academy Award nominated filmmaker Frederick Marx Maybe he'll share a few morsels of advice, too, - always needed

My name is JB Letchinger and I'm a cinematographer and sometimes … JB Letchinger needs your support for Support JB's film about John Jensen and his latest gig

06/20/2024

We are getting support and sharing from John's network, my network and more for this little project. Thank you all who have donated and shared (see below) By the way - did you all know also we're getting funding support from Academy Award nominated filmmaker Frederick Marx? Maybe he'll share a few morsels of advice, too, - always needed. 🙂https://gofund.me/3f2a974e

03/26/2024

I love Noir films and discovered footage. This little story mentions both and this image is captivating. As a cinemtographer, I (JB Letchinger) dabbled in Color Noir for the feature Film "Snide and Prejudice," written and directed by Philippe Mora. (Tagged in comments) I think finding some interesting old footage would make a great start for a documentary. Especially music recording, touring footage - and maybe noir films.. - message me if you have bought a house will some old films in the attic or happen to have a box of old films..

Screen legend Buster Keaton sitting at a bar in Culver City in 1955, looking like a hardened detective from the greatest film noir never made.

In actuality, this bar was built on a soundstage at Hal Roach Studios for the filming of an episode of NBC’s Screen Director’s Playhouse titled “The Silent Partner,” in which Keaton plays a forgotten silent film star made to reflect on his career when a former co-star (played by Joe E. Brown) wins an Academy Award and thanks him in his speech. As Keaton’s character watches this from a crowded bar, he’s further confronted with his past when the television then plays the fictional film that they once made together.

…and this is the real point of the episode, as this framing device sets them up to debut a new silent two-reel comedy with Keaton, Brown, and ZaSu Pitts, more than 25 years after film’s transition to sound. The episode was directed by George Marshall, whose own career started in the silent era, directing the westerns of Harry Carey, and later Tom Mix, and a number of Laurel & Hardy films as well.

This was made at a time when Keaton was experiencing something of a revival thanks to the rise of television, which created a renewed interest in silent cinema in the early 1950s. Then, through an incredible stroke of dumb luck, a trove of Keaton’s old film reels were discovered by English actor James Mason, who had purchased Keaton’s old house in 1952. Mason reportedly arranged to have the decomposing films transferred to Cellulose acetate film (“safety film”) for preservation, and had them delivered the collection to Keaton, who then entered discussions with a film distributor to get them back into theaters.

The Screen Director’s Playhouse was just one of more than 70 guest appearances that Keaton made on television over the course of the next decade, and he returned to the big screen more than a dozen times with cameo roles up through the end of his life.

—

Photo by Loomis Dean for LIFE Magazine

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4zdgosOBm6/?igsh=MWQ1ZGUxMzBkMA==

06/06/2023

Reminded recently about this piece we did for Universal Music a couple years back. Paired with Brian Wilson, not too shabby. Vintage film efx and all. Not a timelapse guy at heart, but can make one. https://youtu.be/vt08M-AMIwo

Music video by Brian Wilson performing Don't Worry Baby (Visualiser). A Decca Records recording; © 2021 Brimel, under exclusive licence to Universal Music Op...

05/24/2023

So fascinating to get an inside view on as it evolves. We’ve been filming these pieces for years and they’re getting better all the time. We shot this one in a day. Excellent directing/producing/editing from Shawn Hendriks at Vangelist. Epic Games and Unreal Engine create awesome tech and it’s a pleasure to work with them.

Learn about the new Virtual Production Visualization Guide in this video with Epic and Magnopus. Heard about virtual production but not sure where to start? ...

04/21/2023

New Blog post is out! Please send feedback, I'd love to hear it.

Thank you for taking a moment to read a few musings on challenges I believe many creative people face. Sometimes the effects of these challenges are delayed by decades or years. Video production, commercials, features and documentary come with a few issues baked into their very essence. With documen...

10/19/2022

Glad to be part of this event - shot and edited the promo clip featured on this page and covering Saturday for Downtownla.com (DCBID) - come visit on site if you're in town and maybe you'll end up in the next cut. -
From DowntownLA.com : "Experience your city in a new way! Grand Avenue Augmented is a guided augmented reality (AR) experience featuring 40+ AR activations by over 30 local artists and two dozen organizations - it's produced by the DCBID. You can see activations through the easy-to-use Hoverlay app."
https://downtownla.com/grand-ave-augmented

Grand Ave Augmented | Downtown LA

09/07/2022

A fantastic performance of rock and roll but also of film archiving. Lost footage discovered in the 90s to complete the Rock and Roll Circus project shelved in 1968. I believe Amazon and others have the whole edited concert/spectacle - but after reading a bit about how the Who stole the show and kind of upstaged the Stones, I went looking and found their incredible medley here. If you want another link there's the Dirty Mac in the comments

Performed live at The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus and filmed on 11 December 1968 at InterTel (VTR Services), Stonebridge Park, Wembley. Look out for ...