JoN Kolnoski
Jon Kolnoski is an LA-based producer, director, and writer. A former staff producer at MTV, Complex, 100 Thieves, and Buzzfeed’s Tasty along with freelance stops at Thrillist, Laundry Service & Cycle Media, Compadre, and Two Fresh Creative Studio, his experience ranges from advertising and branded to editorial and original content, and even the occasional graphics package. He has also produced content across a variety of verticals, from food to sports to lifestyle to music to gaming and more. Whether the project is live-action, animation, or anything in between, Jon stays laser-focused on creating engaging content that makes your audience stop scrolling their feeds to view, all while always staying within budget.
LA-BASED PRODUCER, DIRECTOR, & WRITER
HOT ONES X PAQUI:
the ONE CHIP CHALLENGE
For their annual One Chip Challenge, Paqui turned to First We Feast’s iconic Hot Ones for an epic partnership. With everyone at home during the summer months of the pandemic in 2020, what better way to kill the time and create some great content than get Sean Evans and Lil Yachty on Zoom to eat this incredibly spicy chip? Serving as something of a reunion after the Hot Ones episode where Lil Yachty ate hot wings for the first time, we had Sean in the Hot Ones studio in New York City join Yachty from his home in Atlanta. Their reaction is priceless, and the people of YouTube agreed, as this one peaked at #11 on the day’s trending videos just narrowly missing out on the cracking the Top 10.
Under Armour x Anthony joshua:
FOREVER IS MADE NOW
With only about 3-4 weeks until his fight against Francis Ngannou, I re-united with my friends at Tool of North America, Director Wes Walker, and a slew of talented creatives literally spanning the globe from Australia to Fiji to Ukraine to London, to produce this mixed media video using CGI, AI, and more to promote Anthony and the fight for our Under Armour client. The use of Artificial Intelligence in this piece caused a lot of conversation in trades like Ad Age and on Instagram, sparking an industry-wide debate on the use of AI in content creation.
ESTATE MEDIA
NAR PANEL LIVESTREAM
During my time as Estate Media’s Head of Production, I leapt into action to produce a live-streamed panel featuring Los Angeles’s top realtors discussing the recent NAR court ruling with very short notice, and a date and location that was constantly changing up until a few days before the event. We ended up having to add this to the end of an already long ENG client shoot that day, which was delayed by a late talent arrival, but my team and I were able to reposition the entire set for this 3 camera, 5 audio channel livestream in only an hour so we started on time. I rented all the gear myself and with the assistance of technical director Adam Greene we were able to pull off the turnaround and produce Estate’s first livestream with professional production value.
*NOTE: The content / opinions shared by the panel do not necessarily reflect those of this producer.
ESPN x the batman:
the bing bong mysteries
ESPN Creative Studio wanted to create a co-branded promo to promote Warner Bros’ upcoming release of The Batman during a 2022 Knicks vs. Celtics NBA on ESPN broadcast, and turned to Compadre for help. We overlaid VFX on the existing trailer footage to alter The Batman’s storyline, and shot two live-action scenes with SportsCenter anchor Elle Duncan and Knicks wing RJ Barrett (in the middle of a blizzard!) that we cut into the trailer to complete the “Bing Bong” narrative.
Fun fact: The lockers in the locker room were actually used by past Knicks teams when they used our location of SUNY Purchase to practice until 2001.
Laughs & Listings:
Matt Friend
As the contract/freelance Director of Production at start up Estate Media, I oversee and execute all our series from weekly podcast and video series to one off’s and other content. Laughs and Listings, one of our bigger series prioroities, sees celebrity realtor Josh Flagg take comedians on house tours, where hilarity ensues. In this episode we booked buzzing up and coming comedian Matt Friend and let him showcase his wide variety of impressions throughout this “open house”.
complex x microsoft:
maurice harris, Bloom & plume
In conjunction with a national commercial that was running on television at the same time, Mircosoft partnered with Complex and floral artist Maurice Harris, known for his coffee shop and creative studio in Los Angele’s Echo Park neighborhood, as well as his incredible works of art. The partnership was multi-faceted, including a profile of Maurice as an artist along with an activation at 2019’s ComplexCon, and a follow up video to show how that activation went. We shot the original profile, directed by Patrick Tracy and featured here, across 3 Los Angeles locations in only one shoot day - it was both a fun and challenging one, and our crew really hustled to get it all in. If you’d like to see the ComplexCon activation and follow up video, you can find it here.
HOT ONES X google:
youtube pre-rolls
To promote the release of the Pixel 4, Google sponsored several episodes of Hot Ones, which included custom pre-roll adds. Tapping into the show’s existing IP and inside jokes, we scripted out 3 :15s ads the Hot Ones audience would authentically love. They were a rousing success, with the Hot Ones audience leaving numerous comments about how funny and enjoyable these ads were, instead of pushing back against advertising that wasn’t true to their favorite show. And yes, I do still have the photos of Sean Evans walking through Times Square in various hoodies on my phone.
2Hype:
melt the ice
During my time at 100 Thieves my primary responsibilities were producing and managing both the Nadeshot and 2Hype YouTube channels. Cash had the initial idea, and then I ran with it to create what was probably my favorite 2Hype video during my tenure, and the audience agreed with over 3.5M views. We had an artist create matching 2Hype ice sculptures with a key frozen inside, and the guys competed to hit jump shots that allowed them to melt the ice, get access to the key, and open a locked chest that held a chain for the winning team. This was also the 2nd video we shot that day, during a week where we shot 7 videos in 5 days. It was quite the hustle, and a ton of fun.
100 thieves:
$150K pokemon auction
Well…this one didn’t exactly age well given Blake Martinez’s Pokemon card scandal, but I’m still proud of this livestream. We at 100 Thieves partnered with start up Whatnot in its infancy to rip and live auction a $150,000 box of Pokemon cards. We also raised money for charity, and if you pay attention at the end you’ll see my masked self make that announcement. This was the only video I produced and directed for the main 100 Thieves channel as it fell outside of my primary job responsibilities but I was kind of the 100 Thieves content and development team’s “card guy” (though I’m more sports cards than Pokemon) so I had the honor to handle this one.
COMPLEX X NFL:
KEEP IT 100
To celebrate the its 100th Season, the NFL turned to Complex to showcase why some of 2019’s hottest names in the culture including Victor Cruz, Mack Wilds, Zaytoven, and more love football and the league. With minimal time and budget to turn this around before the December 2019 holiday break, we utilized in house crew to allocate as much of the budget to talent booking as possible, and had talent come in to knock these all out in one shoot day. It was an incredibly fun day on set, after all it’s not every day you get to have a catch with one of your favorite wide receivers of all time.
champs sports:
out of control
When the pandemic first struck, we were due to go into production on Season 2 of Champs Sports’ Out of Control (one of Complex’s lesser known revenue streams is to act as an agency/production company for other brands, and Champs was valued client partner in that part of the business), an interview series where winning sports YouTuber Jesser would play video games against professional athletes and others of note during their conversation. I developed Complex’s first remote workflow to keep the show on schedule and launch Season 2 on time, and remote production allowed us to go even bigger with our talent booking due to the savings we incurred from remote production as well as the opportunity for athletes to join the show from home, instead of having to shoot at the show’s Season 1 studio in Orange County, CA. In addition to NFL All-Pros Jalen Ramsey and Hollywood Brown, NBA stars DeAndre Ayton and Cole Anthony, and then-Dodgers outfielder Joc Pederson, among others.
During my first year in Los Angeles from Otober 2017 - October 2018 I was the Lead Creative Producer for Tasty’s branded content team (at BuzzFeed), and after some staffing changes during my tenure I was elevated to Creative Director. In addition to Tasty’s iconic recipe videos and Tasty Stories that often racked up well over 10M views, my team and I also created new video formats including the Tasty Cookware launch video The Rhythm of Tasty Cookware (right), the Art of the Scoop, and our own version of Netflix’s Nailed It! As those are all on Facebook, Squarespace won’t let me embed them. :(
tasty:
branded content
food porn
My favorite job, period. I was one of only two members of the Food Porn field crew to work on both seasons of the show, and after serving as Field Coordinator in season 1 and emerging as one of the team’s leaders both on logistics and creative, I was moved over to the creative / producers’ side for season 2. We traveled the country spending time in New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, Las Vegas, Miami, Atlanta, and even Hawaii among other locations as we blended the traditional food show with social media to show the trendiest dishes on Instagram. Among my many responsibilities, I was also in charge of connecting with and casting local food influencers for our host Michael Chernow to speak with in our restaurant loctations.
the loved ones:
live in philadelphia
In February 2016 some friends and I traveled to Philadelphia to shoot and record punk outfit The Loved Ones’ final home town show of their reunion tour. With almost zero budget, we called in favors for gear and pulled off an impressive multi-cam, multi-track recording that was professionally mixed and released as a ticketed stream during the pandemic in 2021 for the 5th anniversary of the show and 15th anniversary of the album release it celebrated.