- Jesse originally wanted to study 3D animation and pursue a career at Pixar Animation Studios, but diverted his focus to compositing and matte painting after watching Brainstorm Digital's VFX breakdown reel for Boardwalk Empire.
- Jesse has returned to the School of Visual arts as a substitute teacher several times since graduating, where he's helped students develop their senior year thesis films. He has also returned to the school to sit on a several discussion panels to provide advice to, as well as answer questions from, students within his former department of Computer Art, Animation and Visual Effects.
- For his senior thesis film at the School of Visual Arts, Jesse took inspiration from an episode of the original Twilight Zone series in which a mysterious camera is able to reveal the future of whatever subject it captures by developing and printing the premonition onto instant film.
He experimented with several concepts before deciding on shooting actors on green screen and compositing them into a miniature set that he built in his dorm room on the lower east side of Manhattan.
The short film was driven by a scripted narration over a series of composited visual effects shots. This format allowed Jesse to easily reorder, replace, add, and remove shots based on stress levels and college deadlines while ensuring that the framework of the story remained in tact.
He cut several shots from the film as graduation quickly approached with no negative effect on the story, and received an Award For Outstanding Achievement from the school after submitting the film.
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