I'm a filmmaker, writer, director, and editor out of Austin. I've directed music videos for Scotty McCreery, Third Eye Blind, Blue October, MISSIO, the Eli Young Band, and a long list of artists and brands. 300 million YouTube views and counting. I take on a small group of monthly clients.
A 100-million-view country song cut from 50 hours of home movies. A music video that told the story of the 1968 Baltimore riots through two friends reunited as adults, and won Best Narrative at the Austin Music Video Awards. A 26-minute documentary tracing 25 years of one band. A 13-year-old short film fans cry to in five languages. Different worlds. Same eye.
"Jeff Ray went through hundreds of hours of rare family footage and perfectly captured what 'Five More Minutes' was all about."
— SCOTTY McCREERY · 2× PLATINUM RECORDING ARTIST
My work runs across music videos, documentaries, brand films, and founder portraits. Alongside those, I direct for a small group of monthly clients: founders, coaches, podcasters, real estate teams, and brands. The 12-minute monthly piece gets the same care as the six-figure brand film.
Your podcast doesn't have to look like a podcast. Your founder talking-head doesn't have to look like Zoom. Your walkthrough doesn't have to look like every other walkthrough on the market.
Every frame, the same eye.
No long pitch deck. No three-call sales process. The path from "I'm interested" to "we're shooting" is built to respect your time and mine.
You tell me what you're making, who it's for, and what's not working. I tell you whether I'm the right person to help. If I'm not, I'll point you to who is.
Most clients begin with The Cinematic Edit ($1,500). Send me your raw footage, get a 60–90 second finished cut back, see what working together looks like. Some go straight to a monthly retainer. Either path is fine.
If the first project clicks, we move to monthly. Three retainer levels available, all with limited slots. If you're better off project-to-project, we'll keep doing it that way. No upsell pressure.
If you're a high-ticket coach, consultant, or brand, your real product is trust. Every video you put out either earns you more of it or burns through what you've got. Information isn't scarce anymore. Trust is. Every face on camera, every real location, every unscripted moment. AI can render all of that, and your audience can tell the difference. The gap between real and rendered is the whole product. That's still a person's job. That's still my job.
High-ticket buyers are now sorting in real time between human-made and AI-made content. Content without a real face feels off. A real person on camera being themselves is the simplest trust signal you can earn, and the only one that compounds with every video you ship.
Anyone can rent a Sony FX3. Generative tools can render a 4K barn at golden hour while you sleep. Neither knows which is worth holding onto. Neither knows the cut should land on the breath, not the pause. Neither knows what to throw out, what to keep, and what to slow down. That judgment is the whole job.
Most cuts are under a second, and the camera always keeps its distance from anyone's face. That's not a style choice. It's how the tool hides what it breaks: morphing hands, dead eyes, faces that drift mid-walk, light that flickers between frames. Real cinematic work earns the close-up. The face holds. The eyes track. The hand moves the way a hand moves. That's the shot that builds real trust. That's what makes someone feel something. It's the shot we're going to make.
One of my films is thirteen years old. People still leave comments on it from Brazil, Chile, Italy, and Poland. They cry in three languages. AI content has roughly a 48-hour half-life. Real cinema compounds. Your archive is either an asset or it's a content graveyard. We're going to make it an asset.
One single-project tier for trying me out. Three retainer levels for ongoing work. Each is a complete offering, not an upsell. Pick the one that matches what you're actually making. Move up, stay, or pause between months — no contract.
What I don't do: wedding video, corporate training, stock b-roll, or music videos without a budget and a crew. If your project lives in those categories, I can probably refer you to someone who'll do great work. Just not me.
These weren't requested. Nobody asked for testimonials. People keep coming back to a 2012 short film I made for Sigur Rós and leaving comments — in five languages, every month. AI content doesn't get this. Real cinema does.
Real comments, public profiles, viewable on the Varúð video on YouTube. Translated where original was Spanish, Portuguese, or Polish.
I'm a writer, director, and editor based in Austin, Texas. Music videos, documentaries, brand films, photography. The job is the same in every format: direct people toward a specific feeling, then cut out anything that isn't it.
I've directed for Scotty McCreery, Sigur Rós, Third Eye Blind, Blue October, MISSIO, Wheeler Walker Jr., the Eli Young Band, and a long list of artists and brands. The work has crossed 300 million YouTube views and been written about in Rolling Stone, People, Billboard, and SPIN. Two of my videos went Platinum. One hit #1 on CMT.
In 2019 I finished my first feature documentary, for the duo MISSIO on RCA Records. Now I'm finishing my second, and developing my first narrative feature as a writer/director. While that's happening, I take on a small number of monthly clients — founders, coaches, and creators who want their content to look like cinema, not Zoom.
If it's a retainer, tell me who your audience is and what you're already filming. If it's a brand doc or a founder film, tell me the story you want to leave behind. I read every message myself.
"Beautifully crafted. Great storytelling. Possibly one of the best vids I've ever seen, hands down."
"I always revisit this. Still think about it often so many years later."
"Still one of my all time favorites ever. Thank you for uploading once more — this is a masterpiece."
"Oh my god, I found it. I almost felt like a part of my soul has died when I couldn't find this video anymore."
"When I was a teenager I watched this clip over and over. And of course I cried a lot."
"Since 13 years ago I loved this video."