The Team

Stephen Wisely began his career as a writer in Salt Lake City in 2000, contributing to many local publications throughout the Wasatch front.   He also enjoyed working as an opinion columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune.  Stephen shortly found himself working in television as a staff writer for Animax, a 3D animation studio.  There he fell in love with the creative diversity of production and immersed himself in each department.  In 2002, Animax became UFL Entertainment, offering Stephen a partnership and a promotion to producer.  As a result, Stephen began overseeing the development of three new animated projects where he was able to utilize his attention to detail and unify a team under one vision.  Each project gave him the opportunity to oversee and work in tandem with writing, story boarding, 3D animation, casting, editing, motion capture, green screen and sound design.

Representing UFL Entertainment, Stephen designed print materials and tailored presentations to pitch the new projects to several networks. Out of the three projects, Fox Kids optioned one and another was sold to Warner Bros.  Stephen has also pitched to NBC, WB Kids, VH1, MTV, Universal Studios, Spike TV, ESPN & Disney.  While working for UFL Entertainment, Stephen handled many of the company’s legal aspects.  He regularly dealt with intellectual properties, trademark attorneys and entertainment lawyers.

In 2004, Stephen decided to make the transition from television to film.  He attended the Hollywood Film Institute and soon after produced his first documentary, Symphonies Inside which explored the use of art to battle mental illness. Stephen quickly put his producing knowledge to the test as he began arranging interviews and managing permits and schedules for this complex project.  The documentary gave him new insight to the creative process, allowing him to remove the concept of art from its previous boundaries.  On his next documentary entitled Howdy Partner, Stephen secured permits to shoot on Fremont Street and the strip in Las Vegas.  He saw an opportunity to also shoot inside The Golden Nugget and was able to negotiate permission to shoot on the casino floor.  The Other Side Of Germany, Stephen’s latest documentary, was shot partially in Germany and focused on a single family’s prosecution and journey during World War II.  This documentary gave Stephen extensive knowledge on producing outside of the United States. Although Stephen is well versed in the process of documentaries, he has also produced several narrative works and television programming.  Stephen recently produced the short narrative Whispers In The Dark, where he secured and managed an abandoned mansion located in the Avenues area of Salt Lake City.  Stephen has recently worked as first Assistant Director on the feature narrative Archangel Alpha as well as finding investors for AOI’s first narrative.

R. Jason Ball began his career a decade ago working as an assistant location manager for Touched by an Angel.  Since then, he has turned his focus to the camera department, working as a camera operator in television and film.  In 2004, Jason began working for Park City Television, shooting extreme sports content and quickly became the head of commercial production.  As the head of commercial production, Jason took over X-Zone, which won best entertainment program in 2005.  He also created new programming, such as Sundance All Access and Trail of the Week.  In 2008, Jason left Park City Television to focus on his career as a director of photography.

Once stepping into the role of director of photography, Jason began shooting several shorts and commercials.  In the fall of 2006, Jason traveled to Italy to shoot a full-length documentary following landscape photographer John Scanlan around Tuscany.  In 2008 the documentary won the Society of Professional Journalists award for Best Cinematographer.  Later in 2008, Jason had his first opportunity to shoot a feature length narrative, Archangel Alpha, teaming up with director Aaron Martin of Chance Studios. Jason is currently working with BXP in shooting mobile media content, featuring David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox and Darryl DMC McDaniels of Run DMC.

Invited to join an elite group of filmmakers, Jason has worked at the Sundance Institute’s Directors Lab over the past nine years.  As an assistant director, steadicam operator and first assistant camera for the labs.  Jason has work shopped many films, such as Eagle Vs Shark (2007) and Motel (2005).  Jason has also been able to observe and study Robert Elswit, Ellen Kuras, Caleb Deschanel and Allen Daviau in person as they instruct the many participants of the labs.

Jason has received the Society of Professional Journalist’s highest awards as best cinematographer and best editor in 2006 and 2008. Jason also shot the feature documentary We Still Believe that follows the 90’s band Blessid Union Of Souls, which later won an Emmy for best documentary.  Jason has also won seven UBEEs and two National Telly Awards over the past five years. Recently, Jason has been the director of photography for two award winning films, Jack and Jen (2009) and Reco (2010).

R. Jason Ball Demo Reel

As a musician, Michaela Pentacoff began writing music for friends’ films in her early college years, encouraging her to take the opportunity to examine film academically.  After entering the School of Media Arts at the University of Arizona, Michaela quickly began working on fellow students’ films as a production sound recordist and composer.  With the knowledge of sound recording and music composition, Michaela naturally fell into sound design.  In 2006, Michaela worked as a boom operator and as an assistant sound designer on award winning short film Alma.  Since then, Michaela has recorded production sound for numerous shorts and finished her first feature documentary sound design in May of 2008 for Warring Factions.  Just before graduating in 2008, Michaela established the audio mixing process for the distinguished BFA Capstone Screening of the School of Media Arts by doing a rerecording mix on the twelve shorts, preparing them using theatrical standards.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in the Aesthetics and Criticism of Media Arts and a Minor in Music, Michaela was invited as a production sound mixer to the Sundance Directors Lab.  Since then, her experience has grown and she has worked for ABC’s Good Morning America and TLC’s Sister Wives as a sound mixer.  In October of 2008, she was the sound recordist on her first narrative feature that required no ADR and now currently has distribution. At the end of 2009, Michaela created the sound design for a Brute-Adidas Wrestling commerical called 6 Minutes, which won a Gold Addy Award for Web Commercial and Cinematography. Michaela spent the fall of 2010 working on four short films, often doing both recording dialog on set and creating the sound design for each film.

In contrast to the majority of Michaela’s work, she still writes music occasionally for films and commericals. Her most unique experience has been tailoring custom music for the Moda Provocateur Fashion Show, a fundraiser for the Southern Arizona Aids Foundation held in Tucson, Arizona.

Michaela strives for unique and solid sound designs for film and video.  Her work is a hybrid of electroacoustic music and sound design, yielding a fresh new way to experience the mundane. When given the chance, Michaela explores the difference between sound, noise and music when creating sound design.

Jorge began his studies working in theatre production at an early age in both community and school productions. During these years, Jorge developed the desire to become a theatre director and during his sophomore year at Grand Canyon University, he decided to apply at The American Musical and Dramatic Arts Academy in New York City. He was accepted into their conservatory, a performance based curriculum, which focused on drama and musical theatre. While at AMDA, Jorge rigorously studied the acting techniques of Meisner, Stanislavki, Uta Hagen, Mamet and Strasberg. He hates to say it, but he also studied jazz, ballet and tap. Jorge was no Baryshnikov but he admits that studying dance helped him understand how the body in itself can be used as an instrument of expression. While living in NYC, Jorge also immersed himself within the cinema by visiting art film houses every weekend, and after watching Happiness, directed by Todd Solondz and Pedro Almodovar’s La Mala Educacion, he knew at some point he had to transition into filmmaking.

In 2000, he graduated with an Associates Degree in Musical Theatre and Dramatic Performance and then continued his studies at The University of Arizona, where he was accepted into The School of Theatre, Film and Television’s BFA Program, a program that provided professional preparation in the art of filmmaking. During his college career, Jorge explored all key roles of film production to help strengthen his craft by creating and working on various shorts and features. It was here that Jorge also became enamored with the art of cinematography inspired by films like The Red Balloon, The Killing Fields and Battle of Algiers. In 2004, he earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in Media Arts at the University of Arizona.

Since graduating, Jorge has been lucky enough to collaborate with a diverse group of filmmakers in both short and feature film storytelling. In fall of 2007, Jorge shot La Venganza, a Spanish language feature directed by Benjamin Lopez, which earned distribution internationally on DVD and broadcast on Cine Mexicano’s Satellite Network. After their collaborative success of La Venganza, Jorge was given the opportunity to direct his first feature film Caramelo, teaming up once again with Benjamin Lopez, who served as the writer and producer of the project. Caramelo also found itself being distributed internationally under Cine Mexicano’s Satellite Network. He also shot Goodboy, a film produced and directed by neo noir filmmaker Patrick Roddy, whose works include his directorial debut of Mercy and his second feature Red 71.

In 2009, Jorge directed S.O.L.O. The Series, a comedic webseries about a reality star stranded in space starring Jonathan Nail (Carnivàle, Criminal Minds), which was also nominated for five Indie Intertube Awards. In 2010, Jorge found himself heading to work for Bigfoot Studios, an international production company focused on creating content for the European and Asian markets, in Cebu, Philippines. Jorge gained valuable experience in all aspects of production and a practical understanding of creating media on a global scale.

He recently finished working with Wits End Film’s Tai Fauci and Jack Monroe shooting a webseries titled The Whole Day Down, starring Patrick Breen (Galaxy Quest) and Willie Garson (Sex In The City). As a director, Jorge continues to develop his own projects while continuing to work with fellow filmmakers as director and director of photography. His influences include the films of Luis Buñuel, Bong Joon-Ho, Lars Von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Todd Solondz, Todd Field, Sydney Lumet, Stanley Kubrick and Charles Chaplin. His literary influences include Eugene Ionseco, Anton Chekov, David Mamet, Yasmina Reza, and Eugene O’Neil. It’s the satirical situations, the exploration of subtext between characters and explicit visual choices these artists above have made that encourage Jorge to take the same risks in his work.