Meet Jonas Westin

I'm a Motion Designer at Tv4 AB in Sweden. I have been working in TV for 15+ years now. I started out early as one of the first promo producers ever in Sweden, at Swedish Television (SVT). At that time, the promotion side of TV wasn't very developed. Each producer basically decided by themselves what programs to do promos for, and a regular promo could easy be up to two minutes long, sometimes longer. Every department was its own little island. Sometimes your promo, which you put a lot of work into, even didn't make it on air since the on-air producers just randomly picked the promos they liked the best.

Well, times really have changed, from working with technicians in big expensive edition suites to being able to create stunning graphics on just a laptop. I've been there the whole way, adapting, learning, being on top of it and having a blast. I've produced countless of minutes of TV and I've enjoyed it all along.

I've been to the U.S a bunch of times already, and when I saw the announcement of the GROW program, I knew I had to apply. I applied for the Videographer job in Orlando, Florida, and I got it. Awesome.
Fast forward to Orlando airport...

I have a friend over here in Orlando that used to work at TV4, Fredrik Leuhusen. As the great guy he is, he and his girlfriend came to pick us up at the airport.  They drove us to Winter Park Village where we met up with Jamie and Matt, whom I would be working with here. We had a couple of beers at the local bar (which has closed down now since they owe like $30,000 in taxes). Jamie, Matt and Ken here in the office are really cool and helpful, and they got me digging in right away on a few jobs. I know that the other GROW participants have had more time to socialize, but I've been busy working from day 1, and that's a good thing. Today, it's Friday and there's a birthday party downtown for Shannon, who just came back from the GROW program in Finland. Time for some serious socializing tonight.

Oh. Did I mention the awesome weather and the sun? And the beach. Did I mention like the sun and stuff? ;) Florida is really great.

Jonas's Orlando adventure slide show