ABOUT

Jarrod.

Jarrod Whaley is a Chattanooga, TN filmmaker who has, to this point, worked primarily with digital video. Whaley graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a double-major B.A. in English and French. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Shaking Ray Levi Society, a non-profit arts organization bringing non-traditional creative work (such as improvised music, video, film, and performance arts) to Chattanooga, TN and elsewhere for 20 years. In 2005, Whaley was one of several individuals appointed to the Chattanooga Film Commission by Mayor Ron Littlefield.

Work:

In addition to producing his own short and feature-length films, Whaley has been commissioned on several occasions to produce short documentaries for non-profit organizations such as CoPAC, The AIM Center, and the Chattanooga Area Brain Injury Association. He has taught and/or facilitated numerous filmmaking classes and workshops for the City of Chattanooga, Association for Visual Arts, Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga, and many other groups and organizations. Finally, Whaley has also been known to undertake a bit of Web design from time to time.

More Information:

If you’d like to commission a documentary or PSA, inquire about the possibility of creating a workshop or class, discuss your Web development project, or just to chat, please see the services pages and/or contact Jarrod Whaley.

Press:

“Whaley is like a poet or painter, toiling alone in his dim apartment, thoroughly documenting his discoveries, developing a consistent style—and a consistent substance—which requires little more than the portable apparatus of a MiniDV camera and a healthy human body…The individualism so dutifully represented by the subject matter and mise-en-scene of Whaley’s work is akin to that which saturates Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc…Whaley’s approach may as well be considered a logical and technological heir of Polanski’s work in The Tenant: without a crew, Whaley is able to achieve the same effect of oppressive isolation. Moreover, Whaley’s work seems to emanate from a pungently real solitude, a quality that would be jeopardized by the presence of extraneous personnel amassed behind the camera. Because of this sincerity or candor, Whaley has more legitimate and relevant affinity with Polanski than does, say, Darren Aronofsky…By serially casting himself in the role of the immured individual—in front of as well as behind the camera—Whaley risks accusations of self-fetishism. My accusation is equally severe: he is a pioneer.”

–Alejandro Adams, speaking of Whaley’s web-hosted movies in his essay “Preliminary Notes on Web-hosted Cinema” at braintrustdv.com.

“Whaley’s Short Change [is] … alternately amusing and disturbing…It is an indication of the film’s intriguing shifts in tone that it contains both a scathing parody of local car commercials and the most disconcerting scene ever to feature someone eating cereal.”

–Aaron Mesh reviews Short Change for the Chattanooga Pulse. January 14-21 2004 Edition.