After graduating high school from Duluth, MN in 1995 Jim Ojala joined his local public access station. There he was taught all aspects of video production. Most importantly he gained complete access to video equipment and editing facilities.
Soon he would collaborate with friends, Derek Brun, Marty Johnson and Jeremy Davey to create the infamous series, My Three Scums. The horror/comedy series revolved around a family of misfits, freaks and monsters and their attempts at getting by and back at a society that rejects them. The series continued for 3 years and gained a large local following. However, Jim felt there was nowhere further to go by staying in Minnesota.
It was time to move on.
Taking a chance, Jim sent a large balloon-filled package including a tape of My Three Scums to Troma Studios in New York. Weeks later Jim gets word from Troma president, Lloyd Kaufman that they love it and invite him out to visit. Once there, Jim hits it off with Troma and they invite him to intern on their next film, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger 4.
Once there, Jim is offered a position in the special makeup effects dept. of Tim Considine’s Direct Effects. After the completion of the film, Jim went on to assist Tim on features, commercials, photo shoots and theatre. Jim also handled the manufacturing of an entire bald cap line whose clients included Phantom of the Opera, Blue Man Group, Saturday Night Live and Planet of the Apes.
Once work began to slow down Jim moved to Los Angeles in late 2001. Since then Jim has worked on the makeup effects for many commercials, TV series such as Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and many features such as Where the Wild Things Are and Hellboy 2 The Golden Army.
Jim then formed Ojala Productions, a company that handles special makeup/creature effects as well as in-house production work. Ojala Productions threw a successful publicity event called Toxic Shock Fest which premiered on of their shorts, The Incredible Torture Trio, that went on to gain international distribution. Recently, Jim provided writer/producer/director/makeup fx skills for is a teaser trailer for Marvel Zombies The Movie in which notoriety exploded on online with youtube.com and other sites. The trailer was also a top feature on cable TV’s G4 channel Attack of the Show.
Jim is now in development on his first feature film as writer/director/special makeup/creature FX supervisor, Strange Nature, which plans to shoot in the Minnesota and Michigan in fall of 2008.
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