Photo courtesy of Lilly Jensen

Hailing all the way from sunny Los Angeles, California, junior film major Lilly Jensen is just as bright and warm as the famous city she comes from.

As an avid artist, musician and filmmaker, Jensen has always been surrounded by art, citing her family environment as her gateway into her love for film.

“I grew up in a family that was interested in film, so it was always on my mind and I just naturally found it fascinating,” Jensen said. “I just love coming up with strategies for how I would film things or the actual filming.”

Jensen originally planned on pursuing her interest in editing films but has recently found a greater passion for curating film scores and attaching fitting soundtracks to her cinematography.

“I wanted to edit everything on the beat or have visuals that made the music make more sense and put more emphasis on the music,” she said. “I feel like at first I was so focused on editing the film itself, but then I realized a lot of film is emphasized with music and that’s what I feel like is most important.”

Jensen is known to spend long hours finding the perfect song for her library of video edits, both for classes and pure enjoyment. Anything piece of art, physical, visual or musical that makes her feel resonates with her. Jensen proudly attributes her emotions as being her greatest inspiration.

“Feelings inspire me, it’s as simple as that. How I’m feeling, my thoughts and how to convey those on paper or through sound is what I want to do,” Jensen said. “It’s exciting because music feels so emotional to me and I have a lot of feelings. So to feel like I can put a feeling into a song and then have somebody else experience it too is really meaningful to me. Being able to get across a certain feeling to somebody random that’s watching is beautiful.”

Jensen’s emotion seeps beyond her digital exploration and into her creation of physical art. She constantly pursues new mediums, drawing with whatever she can get her hands on.

When asked about some of her favorites, she excitedly listed every medium she could think of that she features in her art, feeling especially drawn to water color, acrylic paint, Sharpie and markers, but “only the good ones.” She admits her most used medium at the moment is crayon, which she used to hate.

“I feel like you can do anything with [crayons],” Jensen said, “They remind me of chalk but more childish, and that’s really fun. People don’t give crayons a good reputation, I think, which I like because I want to prove them wrong.”

Jensen expressed missing her home city, but admits she has always felt the need to grow and explore, citing that as her reason for traveling across the country for school. But Jensen knew from the beginning she wanted to experience somewhere different.

“It’s hard to be away from home, but I don’t always feel like it,” Jensen said. “I felt like I was always moving around anyway because my parents lived in two different houses, so I knew going to college wasn’t going to be a big deal. I figured that leaving and going as far as I could would be the best opportunity for me because LA is always going to be there. I can always go back.”

Jensen does not have any definitive post-collegiate plans for the moment but does know that she would eventually like to “go back to living somewhere sunny” and continue pursuing a career within the film industry.

She likes the idea of beginning with minor projects and working her way up, starting out by just helping whoever may need it.

“LA would be a great place to live again, but it’s really expensive. I want to work my way up in the film industry,” she said. “It doesn’t need to be big, but I really like the idea of working on sets, either pre-production or post-production, helping the art team, set design or editing with music. I love the idea of helping people or friends with their films or projects and getting to know people and hopefully making more connections.

Jensen’s love and constant pursuit of all things creative is awe-inspiring. Her passion is clear in everything she does and continues to do, making her exactly the kind of artist the world will never be able to get enough of.