Jonathan Wymer is photographed on the set of the Cinematic Arts feature film “Commander” at the Bedford County Burn Training facility. (Photo by Joel Coleman)
Story is everything, in filmmaking and in life. So if you ask Jonathan Wymer about his work as a location manager in the professional film and television industry in Atlanta, he’ll start with the story and he’ll end there, too.
“I like to start off any project by approaching the page, because that’s what I love the most,” Wymer states. So whether he’s working or waiting for work, he’s constantly writing shorts, indie films and stories of every type imaginable.
This is where his own story began — in Central Virginia.
“I’ve been writing short stories since I was a kid. Then, I started doing home movies and short films when I was about 14 years old,” Wymer says. “By the time I was 15, I wanted to direct movies.”
Jonathan Wymer.
So he picked up his dad’s VHS camcorder and ran with it. Straight out of high school, he headed to film school at Zaki Gordon Center for Cinematic Arts at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. And there, by chance, he found a niche in filmmaking that eventually helped him get work in the industry.
“I got lucky in film school because there was a low-budget film production that came to town,and they needed a lot of students to fill the roles of the production crew,” he says. “Out of the 30 students in the program that year — the film program’s inaugural year — I became the location manager because I had lived in town the longest.”
Scouting and managing locations, Wymer learned, was an integral part of telling the story and setting its stage. And it was an area where he could begin his career, telling the stories we all love to see on the screen today.
After film school, in 2014, the young film-maker moved to Atlanta.
“I didn’t know anyone in the film industry down here, and I had to kind of find my way,” Wymer admits. “So I ended up meeting people and getting on set as a day player.” (A day player is an actor hired for a short time — oftentimes just a day — for a speaking role in a television or film production.)
Day player work led to steady work as a location assistant on a production and eventually to locations work on a big union set, where Wymer says he learned the hierarchy that’s in play. “So I took that experience and met some people who were the founders of the Location Managers Guild International (LMGI, based in Los Angeles), and they were bringing new members in at the time,” he says.
By 2016, filmmaking in Atlanta and throughout Georgia — thanks to the state’s ample locations and excellent tax incentives — was on fire.
“I was lucky to work with a team during the big Marvel boom — films like Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming,” Wymer says. “That was quite an experience. Trial-by-fire, for sure.”
During this period, the location manager also joined Teamsters Local Union 728.
“I had great professional guidance and mentors who were both part of the teamsters and the LMGI, and they trained me up right, and I followed the path,” Wymer describes.
There was so much going on that Wymer was working 12-hour days. “I was working upwards of 80 hours a week, and I did that for the first three to four years I was here,” he notes.
He would work that way for three-to-four-month windows on a feature film, for instance, with intermittent windows of downtime between projects.
Then, almost as quickly as Wymer’s action began, it slowed down in late 2023 in Atlanta, across the nation and around the world. The writers’ and actors’ strikes, followed by crew member strikes, would take their toll in Georgia and elsewhere.
Wymer says he saw it as a opportunity to re-evaluate and return to the page.
“I’ve gotten together with friends of mine that I’ve known for 12+ years, where we’ve gone to school together and worked in the same industry here in Atlanta,” he says. “Now, we basically partner up just to help each other with our individual projects.”
Wymer continues, “So if one of them has a short film (project they’re working on), I’ll usually come on as a producer, a first assistant director or a location manager. Or, if I’m directing a film, I have a really good friend who’s a cinematographer, and we have another friend who’s a sound mixer, and a boom operator and so forth. Together, we’re constantly working to create things.”
Wymer adds, “I location managed an independent horror film for a friend up in Virginia during the strikes.”
In some ways, the slowdown in production has given independent filmmakers a chance to launch their own projects — although Wymer admits that many of these projects have been self-funded and carried out on very small budgets.
“The strikes (and the aftermath of them) were sort of an ideal time for filmmakers in the independent sector to get their films off the ground with really great, professional crews — for very cheap — because many of us weren’t working,” Wymer says.
“It gave us all a bit more leeway to get our own individual creative projects off the ground, and (to pay attention to) our own independent film projects,” he notes of the bright side that he can see.
“You get to work on your own intellectual property and to build up additional professional relationships that you want to incubate over time,” he adds.
Does Wymer ever regret choosing Atlanta as a home base for his career following film school? Absolutely not, he reports — and here’s the big-picture reason why: Tough business cycles in the film industry are not a new thing, Wymer knows from school and from his own personal experience. “If it’s gotten slow here in Atlanta, it’s slow nationwide,” he emphasizes.
Then he adds, “During these intermittent periods — and we’ve all been through it everywhere in the past five years in the film industry — I always take it upon myself to return to the page. So I’m always writing and working alongside longtime creative friends. I have a short film in pre-production right now from a script I wrote, and I’m slated to direct it this winter.”
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Carol Badaracco Padgett is an Atlanta-based freelance writer who focuses on film and television, the automotive industry, architectural design and collaborative storytelling projects.
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