Latest BulletinNote
Twenty years ago Time and The Guardian wrote up my podcast eleven days apart. Different decade, same habit — there's a new script, and there's platform work, both in flight. If you want in on something, I'm around.
About Me
The short version
I make films and I build software, and I've been doing both at once since 1998. There was never a switch.
What I'm actually good at is being early. December 2004 — four months after podcasting existed at all — The Guardian and Time both picked my show, Skinny Bones on Air, as the example of what this new thing was for. About two thousand people were listening a few times a month. In 2006 I sold my first feature as a paid podcast: thirteen episodes, two dollars a month, six for the whole film. Apple got around to paid podcast subscriptions in 2021.
From 2005 to 2009 I ran a startup monetizing content over RSS and came out of it with a provisional patent. I supervised post-production for a decade with a 45-terminal render farm underneath me. I won a Signal Award for sound design in 2023, in the middle of a long run of platform engineering.
Sound is the part that never stopped. I started as an assistant engineer in a recording studio in 1998, under Jim Waters — Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Sonic Youth, Lucinda Williams. I've scored my own shorts ever since. In 2023 I took a Signal Award, Silver, for sound design on a podcast. That same year I made an animated series, alone, about running scrum on the Death Star.
Right now it's AI: multi-agent document pipelines, ethics review for NeurIPS, a Model Context Protocol certification.
It isn't two careers. It's one job that keeps changing costume.
Selections & AwardsSelections and awards
- 2023The Crossing Guard Tapes — Signal Award, Silver. Best Sound Design, Shows.
- 2022Untitled feature screenplay — Second Rounder, Austin Film Festival. Dark comedy.
- 2014Present Tense — Official Selection, Phoenix Film Festival.
- 2012BLAMBLAMBLAM, ClickClickClick — Official Selection, Phoenix Film Festival, Phoenix Comicon and Prescott Film Festival. Nominated, Best Live Action Short, Naperville Independent Film Festival.
- 2011BLAMBLAMBLAM, ClickClickClick — Winner, The Loft First Friday Shorts.
- 2006On the Cutting Room Floor — debut feature. Sold as a thirteen-episode paid podcast serial.
Jaz's Top 8Selected highlights
Jaz has 8 friends.
Jaz's VideosScreening room
All of it plays from YouTube, and nothing loads from there until you press play.
Scrum Wars
Present Tense
BLAMBLAMBLAM, ClickClickClick
Bad Time to Sell
Off Key
SBi-Limited music videos
The Whole Thing, On Two TracksCareer, two tracks
Media Software Sound — bar length is real elapsed time, 1998 to now.
Media
- 1998–2001Waterworks Recording Studio West — assistant engineer. Worked under Jim Waters (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Sonic Youth, Lucinda Williams).
- 2002–2013Skinny Bones Productions — wrote, directed, produced, edited and made motion graphics for a feature, a web series and a run of shorts.
- 2003KVOA/NBC — video editor, nightly newscasts.
- 2003–2013TEKCO — post-production supervisor. Trained and managed a 25-person editing team; built and maintained a 45-terminal render farm.
- 2006On the Cutting Room Floor — debut feature. A screenwriter dies and his unread script becomes the industry's most-wanted property, until everyone discovers it is bad.
- 2007–2008SBi-Limited / Invasion Pictures — music videos, co-produced with Mike Shahin. Post-production.
- 2010Off-Key — web series. Twelve episodes plus a prologue and an epilogue.
- 2011Bad Time to Sell — short, with Chris Wolf. Wrote, directed, produced, edited and scored it. A couple desperate to sell their possibly haunted house.
- 2012BLAMBLAMBLAM, ClickClickClick — short. Wrote, directed, produced, cut and scored it. Winner, The Loft First Friday Shorts; official selection, Phoenix Film Festival, Phoenix Comicon and Prescott Film Festival; Best Live Action Short nominee, Naperville.
- 2013Present Tense — seven-minute short, time travel at a wedding. Wrote, directed, produced and scored it. Official selection, Phoenix Film Festival, 2014.
- 2023Scrum Wars — seven-episode animated series about running scrum on the Death Star. Made it alone, start to finish.
- 2023Signal Award — Silver, Best Sound Design (Shows), for The Crossing Guard Tapes.
Software
- 2005–2009SubscribeCast Technologies — director of operations. Recruited the team for a startup monetizing content delivered over RSS; secured a provisional patent. Clients ranged from popular podcast hosts to well-known radio personalities.
- 2012–2014Independent — iOS and Android. Prototypes through production, for design shops and enterprise.
- 2014–2020Savvy Apps — app developer.
- 2020Bank of America — technical lead, iOS.
- 2020–2021CVS Health — senior iOS engineer, then technical lead.
- 2021–2022Nike — senior iOS engineer, then technical lead.
- 2022–2024Katalyst — senior iOS engineer, then software technical lead.
- 2024–2025Nike — technical lead, iOS.
- 2024–NeurIPS — AI/ML ethics reviewer.
- 2024–Ontabuild — technical advisor and product engineer. Built the platform from research stage to production: a Next.js front end, an AI extraction pipeline for multi-page financial documents, a predictive forecasting engine, and a multi-agent architecture for processing 1,000-page documents.
- 2025–Katalyst — platform engineer and technical advisor. Returned after the company was acquired out of bankruptcy, to audit the platform, stabilize core systems and ship the subscription paywall.
Sound — running under both
- 1998–2001Waterworks Recording Studio West — assistant engineer, under Jim Waters.
- 2011Bad Time to Sell — score.
- 2012BLAMBLAMBLAM, ClickClickClick — score.
- 2013Present Tense — score.
- 2023Scrum Wars — score.
- 2023The Crossing Guard Tapes — Signal Award, Silver. Best Sound Design, Shows.
Audio sits under the video tracks. That is where it goes on a timeline, and it is where it has been the whole time.
19982005201220192026
Also, and not on the chart
Signal Awards Judging Academy, 2024–. Technical advisory board, SQLite Cloud, 2024–2025. Video production and broadcast intern at the Arizona State Legislature in 2002, where the job included keeping the non-linear editing machines running.
Certifications: Model Context Protocol; Deep Learning Specialization; Generative Adversarial Networks; SAFe 5 Practitioner (lapsed).
An iPad video-logging app, around 2013, that I got roughly 80% of the way through and never released. The freelance work I took on instead became the career.
People Said Nice ThingsPress
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The Guardian
— “Personal soundtracks”, 2 December 2004
“The available feeds range from Skinny Bones on Air, a podcast featuring ‘the experiences gained from writing, directing and editing an independent feature film’, to the increasingly infamous Dawn and Drew show…”
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Time
— “Will Podcasting Kill the Radio Star”, Matt Kettmann, 13 December 2004
“Podcasts range over such topics as religion (see godcast.org), filmmaking (skinnybones.net), cover songs (coverville.com) and tech talk (engadget.com).”
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NYTimes.com
— “Indie Series Off-Key Hits a Few Strong Notes”, Liz Shannon Miller of GigaOm, 11 March 2010
“New indie entry Off-Key has somehow managed to carve out a place for itself in the space between drama, comedy and thriller.”
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Film Threat
— review, Felix Vasquez Jr., 7 January 2006
“An often fascinating and sometimes dead on satire of the Hollywood business.”
More press
- Arizona Daily Star — “Anybody Out There?”, Erin White, 7 April 2005. A profile of Skinny Bones on Air, then reaching around 2,000 listeners a few times a month.
- Arizona Daily Star — “Filmmaker blazing trail in podcast subscription”, Phil Villarreal, 14 December 2006. On selling the feature as a paid serial.
- Arizona Daily Star — “Local Scene: A passion for low-budget, independent film”, Phil Villarreal, 9 September 2010.