“I have always believed that reality is the best storyteller. There are millions of true stories out in the real world waiting to be heard”

- John Charles Gerald

John Charles Gerald has always loved films since he was a child and dreamed of seeing his face on the big screen one day. He started his education in Film but shifted to Audio Engineering instead and earned his degree in 2007. He made music for over fifteen years and also studied photography while making music for all those years. He officially shifted into filmmaking  precisely while building a ventriloquist puppet himself from scratch for a music video for one of his own songs. He realized it was time to fulfill his purpose in cinema. This puppet was too good for a music video. A film needed to be made.

Before starting the pre-production of the film, he realized he was in the wrong place, so he moved to California to fulfill his destiny. After a year, he gained full access to professional audio and film equipment in Los Angeles, allowing him to start making the film which he named “Johnny”.

Making this film served him as an intense hands-on film school after working on it every single day for six years straight doing the writing, directing, producing, filming, editing, coloring, sound design, foley, camera work, storyboards, original score, some acting and several other things needed to make an entire feature film. His audio engineering degree was a huge plus in making all the sound.

John Charles Gerald was abandoned by his father at birth and severely bullied throughout his entire high school years. Even though the film's idea originated from a different subject, his son’s birth inspired him to shift the film to a personal subject with some added fictional characters and modifications based on his difficult childhood and the consequences this had in his adulthood. His son was born at five fifty five in the evening which is a powerful and meaningful numeric sequence that he implemented in the entire film in both hidden and visually revealed forms. 

His biggest inspirations are George Lucas for his perseverance and vision with Star Wars, Alejandro González Iñárritu for his impressive storytelling skills, Alfonso Cuarón and David Fincher for their outstanding broad range of technical skills, Stanley Kubrick for his mastery in composition and elaborate innuendos, David Lynch for his unique style and sound design involvement and Darren Aronofsky for his brilliant execution of dark psychological subjects that often torment his characters. Paul Thomas Anderson is also among his favorite directors. John Charles Gerald's vivid color and high contrast style is inspired by some of Scorsese’s films from the 70’s and some modern films such as Jean-Pierre Jeunet's “Amélie” and Guillermo Del Toro's “The Shape of Water”. 

“My son gave me the courage to turn the darkest corner in my heart into the most meaningful and rewarding accomplishment of my life.” -  John Charles Gerald