Despite a looming deadline for the Sundance Film Festival, Jesse Hope ’13 found time to visit Franklin & Marshall students and discuss film production, special effects and getting fired by Quentin Tarantino.

(We promise that last bit has a happy ending). 

Hope grew up volunteering at the Telluride Film Festival in his Colorado hometown, a springboard for his eventual career.

“I had always imagined or hoped that there was some way to do it as a job,” said Hope, named one of Variety’s “10 Producers to Watch” in 2025.

F&M helped turn that cinematographic dream into reality.  

“Going to F&M and formalizing that process of actually making short films and studying it made it feel more real. It gave me a pathway to how I might make a career out of it,” he said.

"Going to F&M and formalizing that process of actually making short films and studying it made it feel more real."

Jesse Hope ’13

A philosophy major and film minor at F&M, Hope is now an independent film producer based in Telluride. His eclectic career in the film industry includes working as a special effects technician on Tarantino's “The Hateful Eight,” and as a greensperson on the Coen Brothers' “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” 

An early career mishap led to Hope’s six-year stint as a union effects technician.

“My real first job in production was on ‘The Hateful Eight,’ he said. “I was Quentin Tarantino's driver for a couple of days before he fired me.”

Tarantino blamed Hope for losing a favorite jacket. The plot twist? 

“Quentin had just left it on his bed,” Hope said with a laugh.

“I look back on it positively, because I ended up in special effects [for ‘Hateful Eight’], which is where I really started to make a career out of film production,” he said. 

Hope began making short films with childhood friend Max Walker-Silverman while continuing work as an effects technician. That producer-director partnership resulted in features “A Love Song” (2022) and “Rebuilding” (2025).

“I hung up my [effects] welding gloves and started focusing on producing after the premiere of ‘A Love Song,’” he said.

Film students enjoyed a screening of Jesse Hope’s “Rebuilding” on campus. (Photo credit: Bleecker Street Media)

Hope credits F&M for giving him space to explore.

“At that point in my life, the reason I was in school was to challenge myself and try to understand the world and my experience,” he said. “What I loved about the idea of the liberal arts was just going to school and being able to figure it out.”

Film wasn’t offered as a major at the time, but “philosophy was complementary to filmmaking in a lot of ways,” Hope said. “The little short films I made were trying to explore some connection between my studies in philosophy and my studies in film.”

Jeremy Moss, associate professor of film and film and media program director, was particularly influential. 

“He opened my mind to all the different modes of film. His film history classes were always interesting and really engaging,” Hope said. 

Hope met with several of Moss’ classes during a November visit to campus. The day culminated with a screening of “Rebuilding” in the Winter Visual Arts Center’s 84-seat Colleen Ross Weis ’85 and Martin Laiks Cinema. 

Featuring rising stars Josh O'Connor, Meghann Fahy and Kali Reis, the ruminative film follows a cowboy who loses his ranch to wildfires and finds an unexpected community in a FEMA camp.

Hope won’t have much time to bask in its success. His latest production, “Hot Water,” is already earning nods after its Sundance debut in January.