About Jason Rosette: Filmmaker • * Producer • Educator * Communications Coach

Award-winning filmmaker, narrative architect, producer and executive communications coach. Thirty years directing documentaries (BookWars, GI Says), and fiction (Lost in New Mexico, Freedom Deal), teaching at universities and producing for organizations like USAID and Microsoft Philanthropies. Now I also help global leaders command the digital stage through my VoiceStoryPro™ coaching method and cinematic learning design.

Jason Rosette: Uncovering Hidden Worlds Since 2000

Hi, I'm Jason Rosette—filmmaker, multimedia producer, and executive communications coach. I help global leaders command the digital stage by applying a director's lens to performance and learning design.

My path started in small-town Ohio, making Super-8 films in the backyard. That early obsession led me to NYU Film, where I earned a BFA in Film & TV on scholarships—one from caddying at an Ohio country club, another from NYU itself.

Right after graduating NYU, I directed my first independent drama, Charlie's Box, and later produced the award-winning documentary BookWars—which the LA Times called "Terrific" and the NY Film Critics Circle praised as "Superb." I shot, co-produced, edited, directed, and narrated it, learning by doing. While working as a sidewalk bookseller in Manhattan to pay the bills, I absorbed lessons in persistence and hustle that still define how I work.

After NYU, I wrote, directed, and acted in Lost in New Mexico, a microbudget drama that demanded everything I had. To make it work, I took an approved leave from the Screen Actors Guild—our budget couldn't cover union actor workman's comp insurance.

A New Chapter in Asia

In 2005, I bought a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. I landed first in Hanoi, then headed to Thailand for TEFL training in Bangkok. During a long bus ride from Saigon—with a stopover in Phnom Penh—I got my first glimpse of Cambodia. The country was rebuilding its media and education sectors after the Khmer Rouge era, and I saw an opportunity to contribute to both.

I settled in Phnom Penh, teaching English while immersing myself in the emerging media landscape. I helped build Cambodia's first video production program at the Royal University of Phnom Penh's Department of Media and Communications, where I also lectured. Freelancing on the side, I shot, edited, and produced documentaries for NGOs. During this time, I earned a Master's degree in International Development Studies from RUPP—one of only two foreign students in the program, supervised by Nagoya University of Japan.

A career highlight was launching CamboFest, Cambodia's first internationally recognized film festival since the Khmer Rouge years. Despite challenges like rampant piracy and competing events, CamboFest laid the groundwork for future festivals in the region, including the France-EU funded Cambodia International Film Festival and Laos' Luang Prabang Film Festival.

Expanding in Thailand

I moved to Bangkok and took on an unusual gig: forensic editor for a troubled half-million-dollar feature filmcalled 'Pirate's Curse'. Using dream sequences and voiceovers, I reworked it into a viable TV movie; this saved the producers $500,000 which would otherwise have been lost.

I also founded the Bangkok IndieFest, the first cultural event held after the city's Red Shirt protests. Despite curfews and political unrest, we pushed forward—and CNN Go featured the festival as a pick.

During this period, I taught directing and documentary filmmaking at Srinakharinwirot University's College of Social Communication and Innovation and co-authored Swordsman, a feature-length animated screenplay for Thailand-based Imagimax.

Back to Cambodia, Then Myanmar

Returning to Cambodia, I produced an educational video series for a USAID project supporting Cambodia's garment industry. With those earnings, I developed Freedom Deal: Story of Lucky, a supernatural historical drama about the 1970 US-ARVN Cambodia Incursion. I directed it in Khmer with a Cambodian crew and crowdfunded it on IndieGogo—one of the first Cambodian projects on the platform.

Then came an opportunity in Rangoon (now Yangon), Myanmar. I taught English at the US Embassy's American Center for a year (2013-2014). Internet was scarce, but I used the embassy's connection to submit Freedom Deal to festivals worldwide.

After Myanmar, I returned to Cambodia, settling in Siem Reap (home of Angkor Wat), where I taught academic writing and public speaking while building my stock footage business and exploring panoramic photography.

Since 2021, I've returned to filmmaking with projects like the antiwar documentary GI Says, while re-entering the voiceover industry—lending my voice to audiobooks, promos, commercials, and character roles for games and animations. You can hear samples on my voiceover page.

Music

Music has always been part of my creative life. As Gone Marshall, I released three alternative EPs and several singles, learning mixing and production inside-out. Songwriting, like short filmmaking, lets me craft tight, vivid narratives.

During COVID-19, I performed at open mics and gigs across Cambodia, sharpening my stage presence. Later, I evolved into crooning vintage jazz and pop standards as Robert Marleigh, inspired by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, and Bobby Darin. I've released an EP and several singles, and continue performing regionally in Asia and remotely for international producers.

The most recent ambitious music effort is my 2026 release of the creative jazz vocal record, Needle on the Rim as Robert Marleigh. I produced, mixed, mastered, sourced players, and performed vocals. (*no AI vocals, 100% human)

2024 to the Present: a Massive 'Black Box' Revelation

In early 2024, my creative focus shifted toward a deeply personal investigation. While researching a fictional screenplay project ('CoolGuy: The Legend of Crystal Man'), I uncovered that my father, King H. Rosette (see patent) was a Q-level cleared nuclear physicist at Atomics International and other highly classified facilities.

He worked on the SNAP portable reactor project, for instance, culminating in the 1965 launch of his team's experimental reactor into space:

My father developed and engineered the scintillating crystal detection and monitoring systems for the SNAP-8 and SNAP 10-A portable reactors, while working at Atomics International from 1962-1965. Until 2024, no one in our family knew the nature of his work...

Until 2024, no one in our family knew the true nature of his work. All we knew is that he was a physicist who 'grew crystals'. In fact, he had been under Federal lifetime gag orders never to discuss the details of his true role and occupation - not even to us, his immediate family. This was all due to intense Cold War secrecy and compartmentalization.

He died young (age 43) from what we now know, 50 years after his death, to be occupational illness. I'm now assisting my mother, his 86-year old widow, with her DOL/EEOICPA claim.

My father's mysterious death marked the point where state-level secrecy collided with our private lives, creating a 50-year gap in our history that I am now - finally - systematically deconstructing.

This investigation serves as the core of my next Future Noir project, a visual rock opera based upon my family's experience of this revelation, titled What Remains.

My path since 2024 has been defined by a sudden, sharp clarity. For years, I moved through the world as the ultimate outsider: a caddie in Ohio, a housepainter, a street bookseller in Manhattan, and a bicycle cab operator in San Francisco (in between editing and production gigs, which I took when they came). I slept on many a couch, lived in many a small rented room. I did what I could and what had to do, all to fund my career as a filmmaker.

But the revelation that I am actually the dispossessed heir to a rare, Q-level classified physicist, a 'technological alchemist' who was one of less than half a dozen at the top of his field during the height of the Cold War, and whose identity was effectively vanished by the US government after his death, has recontextualized every mile of that journey.

This tension between the rare brilliance of my father’s "Black Box" world and the gritty, street-level reality of my own has become the driving emotional force of my creative projects today, and moving forward.

It is this contradiction that informs my path and fuels the "Future Noir" vision of current and forthcoming projects, such as Needle on the Rim (cinematic jazz vocal EP, 2026), and the forthcoming visual rock opera, What Remains.

Looking Ahead

My current focus is the intersection of cinematic storytelling and executive performance. Through VoiceStoryPro™, I coach CEOs, founders, and subject matter experts to command the digital screen by applying film-industry directing techniques to high-stakes communication.

Parallel to this, I design high-impact eLearning experiences using Narrative Architecture—a method that fuses cinematic structure with instructional rigor. This approach has served global organizations like USAID and Microsoft Philanthropies, transforming complex data into resonant human stories.

Whether I am coaching a global leader or deconstructing a 50-year-old "Black Box" legacy for my upcoming Future Noir project, What Remains, my mission remains the same: using the director’s lens to uncover the signal within the noise.

Based between the USA and Southeast Asia, I work with clients across GMT, EST, and SGT/ASEAN time zones.

To explore my portfolio or discuss a collaboration, connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an email.

All the Best,

Jason Rosette

Themes: Future Noir, Cinematic, Indochina, Classified, King H. Rosette, Atomics International, Q-Level Clearance, SNAP-8, SNAP-10A, Cold War Mystery, EEOICPA, Scintillating Crystals, BookWars, Filmmaker, Rock Opera, What Remains, Future Indochine Noir, Filmmaker Indochina