Like the differences in population, what Jahnna Randall has accomplished in Los Angeles has been magnified many times, and taken many different forms, from what her already stellar fetes were when living back in northwest St. Croix County.
The model and actress had gotten started here several years ago when working mostly in the Twin Cities and gaining a prime role in a MTV reality series, where she traded places with a model from New York for a week — all in front of the cameras.
Since then she has gotten behind the camera as well to be a prolific filmmaker, all in a few short years.
“We are now doing the festival run for my military short film Lost in Time. We have been accepted into three film festivals so far,” she said recently, adding that she won the best acting award at Hollywood & Vine film festival and was ready to go to the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema, for which Lost in Time is nominated for six awards: Best Actress, Indie Spirit Award, Mary Austin Excellence in Directing, Mary Austin Excellence in Producing, Mary Austin Excellence in Screenwriting and The Marshall Hawkins Awards for Best Musical Score.
“Fingers crossed we win a couple of those. The Mary Austin awards are only for women, which is really cool!” said the energetic Jahnna, who frequently punctuates her email messages with exclamation points. The film can be viewed at https://youtube/G4as8sWSuUE.
Her role on the military drama was workmanlike, as she wrote and directed it, and did the filming and editing last fall. “My inspiration for the film came from my two older brothers who served in the Iraq war. I wanted to create a story that showcased the other side when soldiers went off to war,” Jahnna said.
She also has released a new YouTube web series called Girl Problems. See https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrkxB2ZBXOtyo_B7a7WSVgSIkSc8ZKlTF. There are five episodes already online and more are being filmed.
Of all her varied work, which includes filming puppies in tiaras, her favorite likely is an award-winning web series created two years ago called 2Fur1. But Lost in Time brought her into new territory. “I am actually working on writing the feature script right now,” she said of this added dimension to the series, adding the first draft should be finished right about now. “I’m hoping to be able to pitch that later this year.”
Among adorable animals, demystified soldiers and people with dating difficulties on a reality show of her making, what topics motivate her to the greatest degree?
“Ooh that’s a tough question, which have I enjoyed the most. I love acting and that was the reason I moved to LA, but then I fell in love with writing,” Jahnna said. “Then directing came shortly after when I got to bring the story from paper to screen. I have always been writing, since I was a kid, but never realized I could actually do it as a career. I did it more for fun when I was younger, not really thinking about it.”
But after living two years in LA, she was getting bored with auditioning for films where the scripts were really bad. “So I decided to write my own characters and then realized I actually wanted to write scripts, so I created my film company Why Wait Productions.”
And wait, she did not, as soon to follow were three short films, two music videos, four web series, four commercials and multiple comedy sketches, all within four years. “The project I enjoyed the most doing would be Lost in Time, because the story is so close to my heart, and the fact of how much I have learned from all the previous projects,” Jahnna said. “That’s the thing I love about filmmaking: Each project you will evolve over time, because with practice you just keep getting better and better.”
(For the initial story on Jahnna’s work, written at the midway part of her time in LA, see this web site’s Blast From the Past department).