PHARE
n.
A BEACON THAT GUIDES SEAFARERS.
FROM THE EAST,
BORN IN THE WEST
PhareLight Docs is made up of Co-Founders Nick Weiss and Jillian Ford. In 2019, the two East Coast natives moved out to Los Angeles to pursue respective careers in freelance filmmaking and broadcast journalism.
Within the first eight months of their move, the world shut down due to Covid-19, and the George Floyd protests brought an overdue racial reckoning to the forefront of dialogue in the United States.
These two events and a potential nonfiction film project in New Orleans served as a catalyst to Nick and Jillian’s ambitions and the creation of PhareLight.
Since our inception, we’ve traveled the West Coast telling stories and offering nonfiction filmmaking services to organizations and individuals with shared values, missions, and purpose.
We’re only just getting started!
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Meet the PHARELIGHT team.
Nick Weiss
Director + Cinematographer
Nick is from a small town in south-central Pennsylvania, where he spent most of his childhood in the woods, reading fantasy books, and playing GameCube. His love of stories and writing brought him to journalism, but after producing a short doc about the opioid epidemic in high school, Nick realized that filmmaking made better use of his overactive imagination.
Nick believes that surrealist nonfiction filmmaking is one of the most powerful artforms we have to understand the world and connect people with dissimilar backgrounds. He hopes to continue using his art to advocate for progressive values and demonstrate how radical empathy can lift us into the future.
NICK WEISS
Co-Founder / Director + Cinematographer
JILLIAN FORD
Co-Founder / Executive Producer
Jillian is a Washington D.C. native with a mind like Nancy Drew. She was drawn to investigative journalism in college and worked with the I- Team at NY1. She was nominated for a NATAS Emmy for her investigative piece on unpaid internships.
In 2019, she moved to Los Angeles to work for ABC7, but switched her focus to nonfiction filmmaking following the BLM movement and a filmmaking opportunity in New Orleans. In 2021 she and Nick co-founded PhareLight Docs.
Jillian is committed to engineering PhareLight to be an inclusive and accessible platform for stories that need to be told, but don't make it into the mainstream media.
Jillian Ford
Executive Producer
DARK PLACES.
A LIGHT THAT LIKES
Without the light of a phare, we’d be lost in the dark. Much like lighthouses guide travelers home safely, the stories we tell guide us into the future.
The progress of technology has connected and disconnected us at the same time; thrust into a reality where all we see are our differences. When the challenges of the world are observable from the palm of your hand, all can seem dark.
Where do we go from here?
It’s our belief that documentary film art is best positioned to help us understand our lives. It cuts through the seemingly constant media noise we’ve become accustomed to, and allows us to sit with someone we wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Reality is best shared through the lens of surreality. Black and white are missing, and the truth of our experience is painted in gray shades, devoid of closure. Hearing these stories from fellow humans can help us accept our own relationship with our lives.
As filmmakers, we know that the construction of these empathic connections are essential if we want to accept the unreal conflicts of our time. It will be much more fun tackling these big problems on the foundation of fulfilling relationships.
It's been made clear to young people that if we want the future, we'll have to fight for it. Our role in that fight is to be a light that likes dark places.
