OUT OF THE ABYSS
An Unflinching Lens on Youth, Grief, and the Streets of Seattle
Directed by JJ Augustavo
Out of the Abyss is a spotlight on a rising voice and a reflection of a director who is driven by stories that matter.
Filipino-American director JJ Augustavo has spent the past decade shaping culture from behind the camera - starting with rap videos for money in paper bags, to music visuals amassing billions of views, to campaigns for brands like adidas and Cadillac.
Out of the Abyss follows 15-year-old Dreson Jimerson, aka Mto Dooda, a Seattle teen navigating loss, loyalty, and the streets that shaped him. For JJ, Dreson’s story isn’t just powerful it’s also personal. “I need someone to believe in this kid as much as I do,” he says, recalling the pitch to agents, brands, and tastemakers who didn’t quite get it. What emerged is something more unfiltered: a coming-of-age story grounded in place and a real sense of purpose.
Out of the Abyss is an intimate portrayal of place and identity. What drew you to tell Dreson’s story, and how did your own Seattle roots influence the way you approached this film?
At the time of writing, I was reading Werner Herzog’s “A Guide for the Perplexed,” and he speaks a lot about his 2011 documentary film “Into the Abyss,” which is about capital punishment and prison, and chronicles several inmates on death row and where the title of part one of the series draws inspiration.
In Out of The Abyss, we find Dreson in the aftermath of his father’s death, trying to find his voice, place, safety, and sanity at just 15 years old. I remember when his Dad (Drako) passed and I selfishly kept thinking I had just seen him in Seattle – and talked about putting him in a film one day, and now that ain’t happening, it was all so surreal, but maybe cuz I wasn’t a father yet or was too wrapped up in my own ego – I didn’t stop to think what was gonna happen to his kids. So when my good friend, his uncle Av, approached me with Dreson’s music and story, I had had enough time and perspective to really see how I could honor Drako and help his son. I thought his story had interesting possibilities for a study on youth and place.
Originally, I wanted it to be a branded piece because I felt like that was the best way to get his story out to more folks in the mainstream. I pitched it to local tastemakers, my agents, and brands and pushed it to some other bigger outlets and said, “I need someone to believe in this kid as much as I do.” I quickly learned that most folks have creative wants and ideas of their own that don’t align with mine.
But eventually, a few people who actually saw the value in this story were the folks at Reverie, Mego Lin, and Christopher Blauvelt. I had previously done a similarly powerful film about Dreson’s uncle Av, who also lost his father young, called Son of Yuri, and those who had seen it saw the world I was coming from and how it addressed the issue of street violence in a non-traditional way. Chris Blauvelt and I had just worked on a commercial, and he donated his camera to me and Mego Lin – based simply off hearing my passion for creating. I knew it wasn’t necessarily going to be something that went anywhere far-reaching – or anywhere specific – it was going to be something else. And that’s okay.
The cinematography by Mego Lin beautifully captures both the grit and warmth of Seattle, can you talk us through how you two approached visual storytelling for this project?
Mego and I have done so many films and pieces together over the years, but big or small, what keeps us collaborating is our youthful yet artistic drive for making. We have very similar tastes and trust in one another as creators. I can harken back to countless projects where she was able to interpret my jumbled ideas into a cohesive look. And this was no different. During the planning stage, Mego said, “We can plan for this and that, but we have to be nimble and willing to adjust and improvise (as so much was up in the air).” The good part about this mindset is that it allowed us to not be overly precious about what we had “scripted” going out the window and instead rely on our instincts to make cinema out of whatever was put in front of us.
One moment that really captured this approach was when we were trying to visually convey Dreson’s legal struggles. And I said, “We don’t even need to show a cop arresting him – all we need to show is him sitting in a cop car – and that tells everyone at home he’s had trouble.” Mego, being as resourceful as she is, said, “Actually, all we need is the back of a car and some blinking red and blue lights and the story is told.” Mego brought some Astera tubes, my friend Jarv brought his Crown Vic, and with just a simple shot of Dreson in the back of a car, tired, dejected – we showed, “he’s still finding his way.” This particular scene is so great at achieving the entire voice of the film and production, because it was so simple yet strong visual storytelling. We carried that energy throughout the weekend of shooting in Seattle.
Sound plays such a huge role in grounding us emotionally - how did you work with Christian Stropko and Joe Wilson Davies to shape the film’s world?
I’ve always been drawn to synthy, somewhat dramatic scores by composers like Cliff Martinez, who did Drive or Atticus, and Trent Reznor, and I originally believed something like that would serve this film well too. However, when I got to editing, placing the imagery over that type of score felt disjointed. By chance, I was introduced to Joe, and he pitched me the idea of giving it a more triumphant, sports advert feeling. I wasn’t totally sold at first – but I trusted his POV, and what he made came from how he was interpreting the story and imagery as opposed to the music coming from some reference I had chosen.
The same can be said for the sound mix and design. As I put together the film, I knew what would make the film shine was if it were not only strong musically but full of real-life sounds and voices that felt vast. I wanted to build a world that was full but also heightened and dreamlike in places, and with the sound, I knew we could push the tonality. Adding echoes, layering diegetics (which we captured with our iPhones cuz budget filmmaking of course, but whatever we were shooting we were recording sound that normally gets tossed away, like kids yelling, car traffic, birds squawking etc) or muffling things here and there – we even added an echo to Dreson’s voice as he tells his story to bring a triumphant emotionality to his read – and I really liked the way it turned out. To me, experimenting with the sound design was a way of playing with the reality of the story, and when I showed it to people, everybody seemed to like it, so Christian and I kept pushing throughout the film for ways to enhance the soundscape.
You’ve mentioned wanting to be a voice for the voiceless. How does that drive show up in the stories you choose to tell, especially in projects like this?
I’ve always felt like I never really had a choice of what type of stories I wanted to tell. There are of course, countless paths of story types – but I've always felt beholden to using my creative voice to elevate the story of faces and places we don't really hear from in commercial media - it’s more or less in my creative DNA. And even though this somewhat social justice-y perspective I have is a cliche to an extent, it still comes from the heart for me. In culture, there are always ebbs and flows of what movement is important and what is not. And that’s sort of to be expected, whatever moves the needle will become important, and people latch on to that for a brief period. And that’s something different than what I put out there.
What films like Out of the Abyss or my documentary short DEFY on the AANHPI diaspora experience do is provide a voice for the voiceless of course, but they also give me a sense of belonging and purpose and that’s a great thing to do.
What was it like working with Reverie Content and the post team at HOUSE POST to bring Out of the Abyss to life?
Frankly, both went above and beyond to bring Out of the Abyss to life and completion. From very early on, I was sharing assembly cuts and edits with Rich and Cathleen (at Reverie), and I remember one very astute and important note they had that changed the entire film. Originally, I had the interview with Dreson talking about losing his father come after the film as a reminder to the viewer that this is Dreson’s real life, where so much has already happened – that he really is struggling to cope with the loss of his father. But one day, Cathleen had an urgent idea, and it was beautiful and changed the film profoundly. She said, “What if we move Dreson’s interview to the front of the film - so we could understand his reality before launching into the crafted film,” and I stepped back, gave it a try, and knew immediately this was the key to unlocking the heart and emotion of the film. Outside of all the other support they provided, I believe this one suggestion made the film go from good to great.
With HOUSE POST, I found them to be exceptionally supportive and more aligned with me as an artist. A good example is in the colour. In the build-up to that, I had sent many references from Barry Jenkins, Moonlight, The Safdie’s Uncut Gems, and Janicza Bravo’s Zola. Connor was able to take those somewhat disparate references and piece together a cohesive look that was textured, filmic, but also stylish and saturated. When Dreson is jogging and in his contemporary world, we are more in the Moonlight world of it – buttery, painterly. And then when we are recounting his world, it's a combination of the contrast of Uncut Gems and Zola – gritty but colorful. For me, looking at it from the outside, it seems like a big ask but Connor understood the assignment and gave it the look I was going for.
“I’ve always felt beholden to using my creative voice to elevate the story of faces and places we don’t really hear from in commercial media.”
What’s something about this video - a shot, a moment, a behind-the-scenes story - that you’d love people to catch or appreciate?
As I mentioned before, we had written a far more scripted version of this film, something that was a bit more fiction than documentary. But like most things in life and in low-budget filmmaking you can plan as much as you want, but that more than likely won’t be what you end up making. And the weekend we went up to shoot Out of The Abyss, this was exactly the case.
Without digging too much into Dreson’s life, what I will say is we showed up to film with him on a Thursday night, and by the next day, his family was being forced out of their home, and one of his siblings was arrested that night, being accused of murder. Of course, Dreson, just 15, was already a bit nervous about filming, but now his head state was completely shot and most of our plans for filming had gone out the window.
It’s not even something I want folks to take anything away from, but we had to scramble and figure out how to capture as much as we could with Dreson and his family and still tell a competent story. What was once going to be a slower, more considered film really became about place and the people around him. Where prior I was going to work on Dreson acting a bit, now I was going to lean on capturing the world, a place I knew well, but also was uncertain how it would pan out as a piece.
The saving grace for me, of course, was that he was still willing to film with us. After a few days of shooting, however, I still felt like we had nothing. And had to really rack my brain on how to string the imagery together – and like a flash – a moment of inspiration was thinking what if it felt like Dreson was recounting his life and world to us as he was ruminating on a jog – so the final thing we filmed like hours before we flew out of Seattle, using my mom’s car, shooting out of the trunk – Dreson jogging then looking out to the water, contemplating his life and world – and we are dropped into it with him. Of course, it's not perfect, but for me, as someone who has so much planning and whose work has so little flexibility nowadays, I was proud to see I still had some improvisational creativity left in me.
Your work is incredibly diverse and impressive, from working with Macklemore to major brands like Adidas, what's next for you?
You know, the life of a director/filmmaker is full of uncertainty, and in the decade-plus I have been doing this, I still can’t believe I get to do this for a living at all. But somehow sticking to what I believe is good has blessed me with this opportunity to tell stories – so what’s next for me… is somewhat unknown. I’m sure I will do some branded / commercial work in the near future – but I do know I am planning on making another short documentary on an independent musician from Seattle named Butch Bastard, exploring the connection between his artistry, creativity and depression, and self-doubt. And a little further down the line, I am finally directing my first feature film, which is the long version of a short film I directed back in 2018 called Just a Kid from $eattle. Something I started writing in 2017, and I have kept pushing for nearly a decade, and am finally seeing bear fruit. It’s kind of surreal, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to flex my narrative creative muscles in a much longer form.
Director: JJ Augustavo
Shot by: Mego Lin
Producer: 28av
Executive Producers: Rich Pring & Cathleen O’Conor Stern
Production: Reverie Content
Post Production: HOUSE POST
Sound Mix: Christian Stropko
Colour: Connor Bailey
Original score by Joe Wilson Davies