Episode 860 - Jewelianna Ramos
In today's episode Jeremy is joined by stuntwoman Jewlianna Ramos.“I love these two things. How do I put them together? Because where there's passion, there's profit.”
Jewelianna Ramos - Episode 860
In today’s episode we dive deep into the world of all things martial arts with a truly exceptional guest. A real-life warrior whose skills and fearlessness have graced the silver screen and wowed audiences worldwide.
Our guest today is none other than the remarkable Jewelianna Ramos, a seasoned stuntwoman known for her incredible athleticism, precision, and dedication to her craft. Jewelianna's journey in the world of martial arts and stunt work is a story of relentless determination, strength, and an unyielding passion for pushing boundaries.
Throughout her career, Jewelianna has worked on some of the biggest blockbuster films, bringing intense fight scenes and heart-pounding action sequences to life. Today, she will share her insights into the world of stunts, martial arts, and the challenges and triumphs that come with being a woman in this industry.
So, buckle up, folks, and get ready to be inspired as we unravel the thrilling world of stuntwork and martial arts with the extraordinary Jewelianna Ramos. It's time to unleash the power of knowledge and expertise as we explore the world behind the action. Let's jump right in!
Show Notes
You can reach Jewelianna Ramos on Instagram, YouTube, and Tik Tok at: @Karate.Jewels
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Show Transcript
Jeremy (00:01.158)
Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome Whistlekick martial arts radio and on the show today, Giuliano Ramos. So hang tight. We're gonna talk to her in just a moment. If you're new to the show, head on over to whistlekickmarshallartsradio.com. That's where we've got the show notes and transcripts and all that good stuff. And if you wanna see more about what we're doing with Whistlekick to connect, educate and entertain all of you, go to whistlekick.com. But for now, Giuliano, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (00:28.138)
Hey, thanks for having me.
Jeremy (00:30.994)
It's an honor. We were chatting just a moment ago that it wasn't that long ago that you were involved in a project less than 45 minutes from where I live. And anybody who knows where I live is going to say, wait a second, what? Yeah. I don't know if we can talk about it. Okay. We can't talk.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (00:48.501)
I did sign an NDA, but I will. It's an untitled Tim Burton film.
Jeremy (00:57.934)
Which really, I mean, he's putting out so many films right now, and so many of them were filmed in Vermont that it would be really difficult for people to do six seconds of research and know what you were working on. Awesome. Can you talk about your role in that at all, or do we just need to veer and go elsewhere?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (01:07.044)
for people to figure that out. Ha ha ha.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (01:19.854)
Uh, we can, uh, just a bit. It's already been put on my IMDB. So, uh, I think it's fair to say I was, um, out there doubling Jenna Ortega, which has been a really fun ride. She's super sweet. I remember seeing her, um, on you and somebody told me, ah, dude, you'd be a great double for her. So, um.
We went out of our way and we found out that she was gonna possibly be cast to play White Tiger in Daredevil, the show that they're remaking. And so we went and we like choreographed and we made a whole set and we did a concept shoot as White Tiger. And I think people got to see what it would be if I doubled her. And I think the coordinator that hired me to work this project to double her had seen that and was like, yeah, you'd be great. And then...
I mean, this isn't the project that I made a concept for, but people got the idea. And so I'm really happy that kind of connected. Chase a dream that felt really far and to actually get it as kind of cool.
Jeremy (02:21.074)
Yeah. Nice.
Jeremy (02:25.594)
Yeah. Now, obviously kind of cats out of the bag in a sense that, you know, here we are on a martial arts show, we're talking about stunts and doubling. So your career as a martial artist took you in that direction. But was that what you always wanted to do with it?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (02:43.714)
So it's really funny. It kind of came full circle. I was a martial artist growing up. I've been a martial artist my whole life. Both of my parents are black belts, have karate schools. All my uncles have karate schools. I just grew up on the mats. And my parents, as soon as they realized it was my passion, around eight, nine years old, my dad sent me to my uncle's karate school so that he would make sure that it wasn't.
Like I felt forced to do this. Obviously it's been my passion, it's all I've ever done. And so continuing on that path, I also adjacent to it did theater in high school. When I fell in love with theater and I still had my passion for martial arts, I wanted to intersect the two, but it felt a little far being theater in a high school. And so I remember saying to my dad, I don't wanna,
I didn't want to go to college, but I think now I want to go to college, get my BFA in drama, Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama. So I had like my theater acting background, and then I want to open up a karate school that kind of lets people create stuff that has to do with karate and theater. In my own, I didn't really know stunts like that. I just kind of was.
Jeremy (04:03.066)
Okay.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (04:08.258)
figuring out, okay, I love these two things, how do I put them together? Because where there's passion, there's profit. So how can I make this what makes me profit? And so I thought I would just have like a warehouse gym, karate school kind of deal that also created content. And as I got older and kept competing, I started to see other fellow martial artists that were winning and then transitioning into stunts. And I was like, that's it. That's what I was.
That's what I wanted to do. I just didn't know how to exact it. And so with enough good mentorship and good friends around us that were like, hey, you're already training with us. Why don't you just take the leap and jump into stunts? And I was like, it's a little scary, but you're right. This is where I feel happiest. It doesn't feel like I'm working. So let's do it. And then I've been able to take off and it's been the best feeling ever.
Jeremy (05:06.858)
Awesome. Now you mentioned competition and you kind of came out of this crop of competitors that all see like there's a bunch of you and I'm not I'm going to let you name the names, but all seem to go. Well, let me let me go stun. Let me do stunts. Let me keep doing and
Was that something, was that just complete coincidence? Or was it something that you were all, that group of you were talking about this and saying, maybe we should do this, maybe I'm gonna do this, maybe this is the next step that, instead of costing us a ton of money, makes us some money.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (05:46.41)
Yeah, so it kind of happened accidentally. I don't think any of us exactly had a conversation where you're like, let's plot to all end up in stunts. But you're right, people like Caitlin Dechelle, I mean, we had like the mic chats, Chris Casamossas that had been out there and a few others and they were just big, but it seemed so far-fetched.
um, Caitlin made the transition beautifully. And so we all kind of just felt like this is real. This is possible. Male and female, younger and the previous generation have made this their careers. We can too. And especially with social media, being able to put out our skills and talents to like bring it up and make it, um.
constant, like we're always in people's faces. It's like very easy for our, for coordinators or people in the industry to be like, oh she can do this, oh she can also do this, oh that's a skill that we didn't know she had but could also be useful. And so we were able to brand ourselves much easier and that jump felt very feasible. And I think also just the martial arts industry in general has moved in a very performance direction.
It's not super, like sport karate specifically, is not super traditional, even when you're competing in traditional. It is very performance-based. It is very much like your kias, your sound effects, which aren't like your vocal kias, but your chh-pah, like grunts, groans, like showing like where your strength and maybe resistance is coming from, all of that, playing a movie for people, a live action, a live.
is really made us super passionate about performing. And I think that's what we were just used to. And we were like, we're really good at this. And we're watching so many people that are so good at it stop doing what they're doing to become nurses or get a job at a retail store. And it was hard, it was painful for us. And I think that was the conversation that was more general in our thing. It's like, I don't wanna end up doing that. I love this. How do we do this?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (08:09.054)
We still have bills to pay, we still have college to pay for. And that's, I think, what the general consensus was. We want to do this, how do we do it? We all kind of just ended up on the same path. Once we saw that it was possible, we took it.
Jeremy (08:24.002)
And I think it's really incredible, you know, you mentioned, you know, some of those that came before, the other three folks that you've mentioned have been on this show and so audience members, you know, you can go back, you can check out those episodes with Kassa Massa and Chad and DeShall.
But there had been those earlier ones and they set the path and okay, yeah, we can do this. But I think you hit on another piece that it was absolutely critical that they really didn't have which was the social media piece and the ability to kind of take what would be a reel, right? Like prior to social media would have been, here's my stunt reel. But that's really limited. How much attention do you have? Somebody's reviewing.
dozens of these reels and so you've got a front load, you know, you've got to catch their attention in the first few seconds, but if what's there isn't what they're looking for at that moment, they're on to the next one. But now and I love the word that you used branding, you've been able to brand yourselves as these much more diverse practitioners implementing every all these skills from in training in competition and showing the world that martial artists can be so much more versatile.
And just as someone who, you know, I have not pursued those paths, but show, I'm still appreciative and still thankful that you're doing that because anything that gets more people training, I'm down for. And the more we can show, yes, this can be a career path. It's worthwhile.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (09:58.614)
Yeah, absolutely. Is it easy? No, but if it were easy, everyone would do it. But the best part is that it reminds me so much of that same karate fever that you get when you first start where it's like, there's so much to do and there's not enough time to do it all, but you can spend hours and hours in the dojo.
and you start off with one thing and then it takes you down this whole rabbit hole and you end up practicing completely different things. By the end of the day you've trained so many different stuff but you're just super excited. That's what it is, like same thing with stunts. It's like, oh man, we start off with just like some kicks but then you think, oh yeah, this one time I saw somebody go from a kick into a wreck and then you start practicing wrecks and then you're like, oh wow, I hit the ground there.
but I could come out of this into that and then you start blending the two and then you're like, oh, I saw this one person do a combo and then you start doing fight choreography and then you start doing all this other stuff. So there's never, and then there's practical, just normal skills that are very practical in stunts like roller skating, riding a bike, driving, driving manual, things that you wouldn't really think of. So there's never enough.
time in the world. So you wake up every day with this like ambition, this motivation to, hey my body needs a little bit of rest but I could really read up on how camera, dynamic camera movement helps my fight movement sell. So there's always something for you to learn, something for you to work on and it just it's like when you get your black belt. That's just the beginning of the journey. Now there's so much more to learn and so much more to like work on
I don't want to say the word perfect, but things that you can continue working on to master and whatnot. So it's the same thing. You work on your boxing, but then you gotta work on your tricking, and then you gotta work. There's always more and more.
Jeremy (12:01.138)
There's always more. You know, when we think about the film industry, so many people get involved. They want to become actors. I don't know what the numbers are. I can't imagine it's even 1% of the people who aspire to that ever make a career out of it. So I'm thinking about your parents and you talking to them about this idea that you want to, you know, maybe I have a school and we combine some of these things. I imagine they were supportive if you were.
competing, anybody who's been out there, and I had a few years of competing heavily, anybody who competes heavily, it's a family endeavor because you're gone all the time and inevitably you're making these choices to miss these things because you've got to because you need the points or whatever you're doing.
Is your family also supportive of you veering into this?
Jeremy (12:55.683)
stunts.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (12:57.762)
So I've been super fortunate. This is not the norm at all, but I was very much raised in a home with the most loving and supportive and almost unrealistic home, where it was passion comes first. Whatever you're passionate about, pursue that. School comes second. I told them when I was in like fourth grade, fifth grade, I don't wanna go to college. And they were like, okay.
what do you want to do? And I was like, I want to have a karate school like mom and dad. And they were like, like us? We're doing pretty good. We love what we do. You love that too? Cool. Like go for it. That's music to my ears. Cause now I have somebody to, you know, like generationally pass this karate school down to. And then when I told them like, actually I think I do want to go to school, but for theater, they were like, that's awesome. You do want to go to college.
great, we'll start saving up. And then I ended up saying, like last minute being like, actually no, college is not for me. As soon as my scholarship ran out, I dropped out and I was like, I'm gonna go run manage own karate schools. And then Justin and I, my husband Justin Ortiz, he's also been on the show before.
and I moved around the country a ton, doing a bunch of really awesome martial arts business industry stuff. And then while we were here in Atlanta, it just, it hit us and we managed to blend it really well where we were still able to run karate schools and then, and do stunts. And then once it, we kind of became established and we felt like this was consistent enough or we had enough money that we could save up.
Even if we didn't make money for six to nine months, we were gonna be okay. Then we transitioned to full-time stunts and we also still had seminars and stuff like that. So it was just a really smooth transition. And my parents were all for it. I mean, we had a game plan. We didn't just do it blindly. We were smart about it. We knew that worse came to worse. We were still prepared. We still had options. We didn't burn bridges. We didn't just wake up one day and be like, this is what we wanna do. So we're gonna.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (15:18.254)
quit and leave everything and just do what we want to do. It's, hey, we're gonna work 80, 100 hour weeks so that we can sustain and build and grow both careers at the same time, not leave anybody empty handed or throw our monkey on somebody else's back. We worked really hard to sustain both. And then when we were ready, we started to wean out of one and we jumped ship into the other.
We still had the support of everybody at the karate schools. And so if we wanted to go back or we needed to go back, we knew that we had different options with them, which was beautiful. We're so grateful for people like Josh Horwich and Tim Lee, if you've ever heard of them, they're phenomenal martial artists and people.
Jeremy (16:04.878)
Nice. And of course, you mentioned your husband, and who was on the show not terribly long ago.
I've known a number of martial arts schools that are run by couples. And you know there's often some playful banter, sometimes a little less playful about how things need to go. I grew up in a school like that where you know it was, no that's not how we do it and you know so there was all that but both people were aligned. They're doing the same thing. And I think a lot of people would look, okay so you're taking these gambles.
because anything in the film industry is a gamble, at least initially. I think a lot of people would say, well, maybe should one of you have a conventional job, but that's not the route you took. I imagine that there was, there's some upside to that because you're working on the same things. Maybe you can support each other, but some risks too. You mind speaking to that?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (17:09.686)
Yeah, so.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (17:13.986)
Justin stayed at the karate school with a conventional job a little longer than I did As a female in the industry We there are 12 to 20 men to each woman first so as much as I will as I would like for people to recognize how difficult it is for females in
Other areas and parts of life where they're, you know, it's different from a man to a woman. In this industry, I as a female have to recognize that it is more difficult for men than it is for women. There is more opportunity for women. I believe that, I mean, from what I have seen, there are more actresses that are like, oh no, I don't feel comfortable running in my heels.
because I don't want to twist an ankle, break an ankle, and then I can't be on the rest of the show. Whereas most actor men will say, oh no, I can do my own stunts, I can do this. So a lot of times there's more need for women. And then on top of that, like, for every woman, there's 20 men, like they have options and they're a lot of times gonna hire the ones that have a longer resume and maybe even their friends.
versus like, hey, I don't have really any options with women. So I was fortunate enough that when I jumped into the industry, I picked up work pretty quickly and I got established pretty well on runs of shows. Meaning I was there from beginning to the end of the show or beginning to end of the movie, which means I was out for months at a time and traveling and whatnot. But Justin definitely has like.
really grinded, really hustled his way into this industry by, he started off with a lot of like day planning, a lot of day player jobs, a lot of like one week here, another like one week there. And eventually he like got onto that like more comfortable, consistent level, but it took a lot more. So in that time where he felt like, Hey, I'm not going to be working for three months out of time. I've communicated very much.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (19:34.194)
like what I want to do and how I want to do it with Josh, which was the owner of the dojos. And he was super supportive as well. So he was like, Hey, if you need to take a week off, two weeks off, three days here and there, like do that. And then you just come back and you do what you got to do. So he definitely like stayed and we were, we had that conventional job holding us down until he finally...
established but it's definitely a lot easier for a woman to be like, hey I'm gonna do stunts and then be successful versus a man pretty much average height Justin is not average in skill set by any means whatsoever but people don't know that until they see it for themselves so
Jeremy (22:51.442)
So what you're saying makes sense. It sounds like even though on the surface maybe it was, hey, let's just both jump in with both feet and cross our fingers and hope that it works out, there was a lot more structure there, a lot more planning. And actually you kind of hinted at that. This gig you put together a test. It sounds like you're both approaching your careers in a really intellectual way.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (23:14.19)
Thanks. We try to assess our risk and practice good risk management. I think that's exactly what our industry is in general. In martial arts, you assess risk, you mitigate risk, you take risks because you got to score, you got to hit them. But if you can hit them, they can hit you.
So it's all about trying to create all these game plans in your head and choose the one with the lowest amount of risk. You get in, you get your two licks in, and then you're out, so that way they can't clock you back. Right, so it's the same thing when it comes to stunts. Hey, I know I have to take this fall, I can just throw myself, or I can break the fall with my arm, or with my leg, or with, you know, or hey, I need you to.
go do this thing with a motorcycle and I need you to somehow end up here because that's where the camera is going to be. I see rocks and gravel there. That's not good traction so I'm going to go the other way. So it's all about good risk assessment.
Jeremy (24:28.342)
One of my favorite questions of folks who take their martial arts into film acting stunts, it's kind of the opposite of what people think, right? We know how your martial arts impacted your career, but what about what's going on in your stunt work that you might bring back into what we might think of as traditional martial arts, traditional training?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (24:50.492)
Um.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (24:53.87)
that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Is that the quote? There's so many different styles. There's so many people from different backgrounds, from different places around the world that you meet, you train with, and ultimately you have a lot of different coordinators that you, yes sir.
Jeremy (25:01.974)
That's the cliche there, yes. What do you mean?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (25:21.878)
That's not how I throw a sidekick, but this coordinator wants me to throw a sidekick this way. And I may not be comfortable with it, but I do it that way. And then I start to see like, oh, I really liked the way that actually uses my hip rotation. I didn't realize, I would have never thought of doing my punch that way, but I did get from point A to point B a lot faster, which in turn speed is power. Like,
You know what I mean? A lot of things that I wouldn't have thought of or didn't make sense in my head Now coming from different styles. I mean, there's a lot of like Muay Thai Judo kickboxing boxing and coming from like I come from a Junri style Taekwondo is Blending these styles and seeing like wow. Okay, if I Do this with this now I have kind of like a baby in between
And so it's really nice being able to explore all the different paths and also just patience. Like, yes, I know how to kick, but having the patience to be a white belt again and learn things from scratch, being able to like, okay, I know that's what I know, but let's move that to the side and learn and be a student again. And it feels so good.
And it reminds you like, I don't know everything and not everything that I know is the best way to do things. So it's definitely brought me back to a humbling point in my martial arts, especially in like traditional martial arts is what is their tradition? Why do they do it that way? So.
Jeremy (27:07.454)
One of the most, I guess, appropriate things that I've heard said on this subject, I was listening to Michael Jai White talk, I was at a session with him at an event, and he talked about his first film, and that he went in there and in his mind he killed it, and then when he saw it on film later, he'd gone so fast that it looked terrible. And so just this idea that, I mean, the way you said it, you don't know everything, none of us know everything, but the idea that,
You know, what works in this landscape might not work in this landscape. And landscape isn't as black and white as the dojo and on camera. It's it's there's so many varieties competition versus training versus, you know, I used to make some adjustments to my forms when I was competing, but I had to remember how to undo them for testing for my instructors, right? So all these different angles. And it, it becomes an asset.
right, the ability to make those adjustments.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (28:08.374)
The ability to adapt, absolutely. And being able to adapt things, like I can be in the middle of doing fight choreography, which film fighting from regular fighting is so very different. It looks the same on screen, but oh my gosh, wow, is it at a completely different style? And what looks good on camera does not make sense to a real martial artist. And so a lot of times like,
Jeremy (28:25.987)
If you do it right.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (28:36.886)
That's why there's so many dancers and gymnasts that, and cheerleaders that do so well in this industry doing fight choreography is because they come from a blank slate and they are easy to learn and they have the body awareness to pick up what they're being taught. But sometimes martial artists don't do very well in fight choreography because they're so set in their wits. Like, I know that this is how you throw a hook punch. This is how you throw a hook punch. And they can't break from that habit of throwing a good, correct, strong hook punch.
but it just doesn't look good on camera. So being able to adapt is such a great skill. And like Michael Jenwick said, slow is smooth, smooth is fast because our fight choreography is very slow paced and then they speed it up in post. We're not moving and running that quick because we'll hit somebody. You can't have that much control when you're going fast. So everything was, I mean, not everything, but there's a lot of stuff that is moving magic. Like we...
We don't really hit each other. Like nobody is actually breaking bones out here. And it's, sometimes it's hard as a martial artist to break all these years of traditional training to learn film fighting, which feels almost more like a dance than it does martial arts.
Jeremy (29:50.982)
Were there aspects of that you found more difficult to kind of unlearn or at least put on pause for you personally when you started doing this stuff?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (30:01.539)
Um...
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (30:05.906)
Yes, so I naturally bring my like my guard or my chamber where I put my hands. Sometimes I'll end up covering my face for camera and so now I'm hiding my face to camera. But sometimes like or even
trying to go like a good punch going straight from point A to point B, and having to recoil to throw a punch was just, I remember really struggling with that and being like, okay, they'd say throw across and I'd just throw across. They're like, it's great, it's a straight line, but it's too fast for the camera. I want you to pull back and then throw it. Or even like just, even if it's a straight punch, I'll go straight line and they really actually want.
like it to cross over to the other side so it sells and so that was also a big one. I know it's not a hook but they still wanted to have somewhat of a curve. What's another one? Uh, da da.
Jeremy (31:09.542)
That makes sense, the whole exaggeration thing, right? Because when we start, we start with semi-exaggerated movements, but through nearly every martial art that I've trained in, we start rounding off those corners and how do you become more efficient and now go in the exact opposite direction and to sell. Yeah, all right. Are there things that you've done that you are more proud of than others?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (31:10.492)
Oh yeah.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (31:28.395)
Yeah, that's definitely.
Jeremy (31:38.662)
I don't wanna necessarily say a favorite project you've worked on, but there are things when you watch it later, you're like, yes, I nailed that, I'm pumped.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (31:47.726)
Um, as a performer, I feel like I am my biggest fan and my harshest critic. Um, but I think any good performer is, um, or any good martial artist, or any good, um, any ambitious person is. And so, uh, let's see. I think...
This one hasn't come out yet, but...
on Red One, it's a Christmas movie with The Rock and Chris Evans. I really love the work that I got to do on there because I got to, I was on there for a few months, so I had a lot of different things that I got to do. Being, I was like a resort goer, so I had some stunts like falling and like running and like just from this crazy like fight and tripping and stuff.
And then I got like an acting part where I was like, I got to act and be myself. And then like a quick switch, like I'd run over and they put me in my mocap suit and then I was agent penguin. So I'm like waddling around and sliding on my belly and fighting like a penguin. So it was like just really like crazy transitions and being able to like in my head be like, okay, look clumsy like you've never been a coordinated person in your life to act really dumb and like.
lost and then go in there and be a really tough Italian male penguin that fights with the rock, you know what I mean? So it's like really big transitions and a lot of different like movement styles and being a movement artist like that's when I really realized like people there's actors, actresses that act with their face and what they say and how they say it but in the same way.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (33:49.358)
I get to tell a story with my movement and how I move my head and how I put my posture and how I move my shoulders. And so it's telling the same story or doing the same thing, telling stories, but I get to do it through my movement. And so it was fun having big transitions. There's some stuff that we did on Miss Marvel and Blue Beetle. Those movies, they're so big.
Black Panther, like Wakana Forever, those budgets are so huge that they chop all this stuff to bits and pieces. So you'll work on these really incredible stuff that you love and you're like, oh, I can't wait to see what that looks like. And then a lot of it gets ends up on the cutting room floor and you never get to see what it actually looked like. So these like in between films where they're still very big budgets and they're still very large movies.
It's fun and exciting to see like, oh, all my hard work there. But I think the icing on the cake, my all time favorite one to date is this movie that's coming out called Grand Death Lotto with Awkwafina and John Cena. It's an action comedy and it is like the exact genre that I feel I thrive in and connect with the most.
on there, I got cast for being a martial artist. So I'm, it's in a century dojo. I don't wanna give away too much, but I'm literally just being me. And it's about being funny while getting, a lot of it was freestyle. Like I got to come up with all of my own choreography. Not all of it, but most of it. And so like, it's like really big movement and like, ah, like crazy stuff. And so it's just really fun getting to be like,
Jeremy (35:23.131)
Thank you.
Jeremy (35:27.558)
No, it's not.
Jeremy (35:38.506)
Uh, yeah.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (35:48.59)
my me as a person and bring like what I bring to the table to film and tell a story and be fun. Yeah, so that's my all-time favorite one and I can't wait. Like when I walked in and I saw like all the century uniforms and like the belts and like all the century shoes and the gear bags and bobs, I was like, oh this is great. And then the costume designer, she was like, okay.
Alright, so I don't really understand sizes and I was like I'm a size three top and a size two top and a size three bottoms and I'll take a four black belt if you have it. And I was the token girl in the dojo. There was only men. So it was like, it was just that one goes to heart for me. That's my favorite one today.
Jeremy (36:31.726)
And we can tell because as you were kind of gesticulating talking about it, you got so big that you lost one of your AirPods. Am I, am I correct in, in observing that you like to be challenged, just the way you talked about some of those things, your eyes got a lot bigger when you're talking about things that you were working on or things that had been difficult rather than the things you, I'm guessing have done a number of times.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (36:37.614)
I did. I did.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (36:59.946)
Yeah, definitely. I wake up every day and I tell myself, let's do hard things. I love doing the hard stuff. I challenge myself every day. To me, the board is wiped every night and I need to earn my sleep and there's no way I earn my sleep if I didn't push myself to do something difficult every day, even if that day doing something difficult is getting out of bed.
There's days where we're so beat up, I'm covered in bruises, I'm very sore. There's days where my neck is so sore from hitting the ground that I can't really move. And I'll still get myself up and go to the gym because movement is medicine. And there's days where I just wanna eat trash food and I wanna eat a burger and fries. And sometimes I will challenge myself to eat well, just because.
at the moment that's the hard thing to do. So I will often choose to do the hard stuff because that mental fortitude and that discipline is what has gotten me here. I wasn't a natural. I worked really hard for all of the skills that I have and I love what that payout feels like for me. So I choose every day to do things that feel like, oh, that was a good payout.
Jeremy (38:21.618)
How you do anything is how you do everything. That makes sense if you wanna be disciplined in that area. So it's the little stuff, it's the make your bed, it's the reason I take cold showers, right?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (38:23.726)
how you do it.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (38:33.019)
Mm-hmm. That's a good one.
Jeremy (38:34.542)
Yeah. I had something, where was it? I lost it. Okay. Oh, thank you.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (38:40.938)
No you didn't. You have it right there.
Jeremy (38:47.65)
What's coming next? And I don't just mean the next project. I mean that next evolution of you and your career and your relationship to martial arts. Because I cannot imagine that someone as thoughtful as you, because we can see that from the conversation you and I have. And you think about all of these things in a really intellectual way. I don't imagine you haven't thought five, 10, 20 years out.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (39:15.382)
Absolutely. So this is actually not something that I just go around saying because it is ambitious and I...
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (39:27.774)
want people that share that ambition to hear my story and make it feel normal to me. I can't stand when I like say something that feels very real and possible to me because I've done a lot of really crazy things that people were like, oh you'll never know, you're being unrealistic, and I do them. And so I feel like I can do anything. But then sometimes I'll say something and
I'll get a reaction that's like, oh yeah, okay. I'm like, wow, is that off? But here's the plan, here's the goal, here's what I am doing with my life. So I really enjoy being a stunt performer. I love being a stunt performer and focusing on stunts. But there's only so long that I can hit the ground comfortably. Also as a woman, like I do have that.
biological clock, like at some point, you know, I would like to have children. And so that is something that is there. So I want to spend maybe the next five, 10 years really enjoying like the physicality of my life, but slowly incorporating more acting. I love to just story tell. I'm also working a lot on learning, getting behind the camera. So like.
I enjoy shooting, I enjoy creating choreography, I enjoy writing script, I enjoy color grading, I enjoy editing, I enjoy sound design, I enjoy score, the music that happens behind and how that tells the story. I just enjoy creating. So I'm focusing on learning as much as I can in front and behind the camera. So stunts to acting to maybe some stunt coordinating fight choreography.
And then I, if something like second unit directing comes from it, that's great. But I don't think I really aspire to be a director one day. I think because I'm very managerial, I'm very organized. I'm very type A to-do list type of person. I would like to become a producer. I would like to one day become a producer. So I'd like to produce big projects.
Jeremy (41:45.222)
wouldn't have guessed.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (41:52.426)
and I love to network with people. So I'd love to be able to connect and plug and play and see what people's strengths are, individualize them, make them feel special and put them in the right seats on the bus and hopefully create some real magic and make some stuff that inspires. I think I exist to inspire. So I'd like to do all the hard stuff and really inspire people and show them that you can do anything being.
Like a woman in the industry has their challenges. And I think producing and directing are two of the harder stuff to accomplish. So I'll definitely do one of the other. For both. Goodness.
Jeremy (42:36.87)
All right. Well, you mentioned one of the, I guess, metaphors that I enjoy most, seats on the bus, right? Jim Collins, get the right people on the bus and then get them in the right seat.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (42:51.03)
Sorry, my Siri went off.
Jeremy (42:52.986)
Oh, it's quite all right. We'll just make note there for Andrew.
Jeremy (43:05.478)
You mentioned one of my favorite metaphors, Jim Collins, get the right people on the bus and then get them in the right seats. And, you know, it wasn't that long ago that martial artists as a career, we only had a few seats on the bus, right? It was...
open a martial arts school, and that's pretty much where it ended. And we're seeing a lot more of that now. And a lot of it's because of social media and creation. We've talked a lot about how you've created for other people, but earlier, as we were talking, you talked about the. And instance where you created something sounded like kind of start to finish. And is there more of that in the works? You know, maybe shorter form. You're nodding. So I'll just.
Let you go.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (43:52.938)
I'm just, I'm enjoying listening to you, your great host, by the way. Yeah, no, there's so much in my brain all the time. I have notes in notes on my phone, on my iPad, in person, like pad writing, like little notebooks with a ton of stuff.
Jeremy (43:57.49)
Thank you.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (44:16.958)
everywhere because as soon as I get an idea, I like to write it down. There's always something to create. There's always something in the works. So we actually just finished shooting a horror short yesterday and I was editing that yesterday and today and so there's always stuff that we're creating fight scenes. We'll see something and we'll be like, oh that would be a cool move if we threw that in a fight and it's the same thing with martial arts. You look
and you watch something and you're like, oh, that would be cool if I could do like a jumping sidekick over this thing, like that would be cool, right? So then you go and you try and you explore and you're like, oh, nice, this is fun. Or even when you're in a fight, like, hey, we don't really throw elbows and knees in this thing, but I'm kind of inspired to go train some elbows and knees on the bag, you know? So it's the same thing. You catch inspirations from
everywhere and then there's always something to do, there's always something to work on. And same thing being like martial artists, finding ways to bring that out and about. At first, I mean, like you said, very limited options, become an instructor, open up a karate school, or go get a real job. Like that's it. That's the end of your martial arts career. And so now we're seeing people transition like, hey,
I'm a kickboxing fitness coach. You know what I mean? I get to do my martial arts, but I'm also, but I'm focusing on like the fitness and getting people in the best shape of their life. Or we have private coaches that just focus on teaching people their like performance side of martial arts to compete. There's the business consulting side where it's you're not actually sitting at a karate school teaching martial arts, but you're
you're overseeing, you actually have the most hands or the most lives that you're touching because you're teaching the instructors how to reach more people in a martial arts school. So you know what I mean? People have different passions.
Jeremy (46:30.348)
I do, and for the audience, I didn't pay her to say that. It's one of the things that I do professionally.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (46:37.876)
Yeah, absolutely. And that's, it's so beautiful. Like, I didn't know that actually, I was just talking. So that's awesome.
Jeremy (46:45.478)
I know you didn't know that, but they don't know that!
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (46:49.378)
Yeah, so there's so many different options and seeing somebody be successful, I don't know, in film, then they're like, hey, I can fight and I really love fighting, maybe I can do that for film. And then you start getting into stunts or there's so many different things. So I love where this, like you said, social media has been such a great tool for that. Just seeing your options and putting yourself out there.
Like in the industry, in the stunt industry, we do, you have to have your headshot and your resume, that's what you send out. But most of the time, scratch the back, all the time, they ask for a current selfie. Because you take your professional headshots, but those are expensive, and you don't update those as much as your look updates. So coordinators are often looking for like a look.
And your head shot may be it, but you may not actually look like that right now. You may have cut your hair, you may have gained weight, you may have lost weight. It doesn't matter. So they always ask for a current selfie. What goes beyond that is our social media. That is your current reel. That is your current resume. It is showing them like, Hey, on my reel from like two, three years ago, I've gotten way better.
but I can't be updating a reel every five days and re-uploading and sending it out. That's too much. But you post that stuff on Instagram. We're not seeking, it's not about perfection. Progress over perfection. Show that you're training a new skill. Show that you're a martial artist and now you're training parkour because you may not need to be able to do a 15 foot jump, front flip down to the floor. They just need you to vault over the hood of a car.
And that starts, you know what I mean? So just showing that you're progressing in all these different skills is your current reel. And that's how coordinators can see, or people just in general. Hey, I know we never knew her for being able to do like flips or tricks, but she's been working on it and I think that's good enough for the movie. And by word of mouth, it gets around and that's how people know. So, yeah.
Jeremy (49:07.346)
bringing a martial arts mindset to everything you do, including your career.
The best benefit of martial arts is reminding us that discipline takes us in so many places. If people want to follow you, if they want to maybe check out some of these things that you've been talking about, your social media, maybe there's a website, let's give them the info.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (49:16.031)
Absolutely.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (49:30.722)
Definitely, I'm most active on Instagram, which is at Karate.jewels. You'll see me on there. I think the first thing that's pinned on my profile is a pop flare round kick with the mountains in the back, so you'll know it's me. But I definitely post a lot of content on there, and I tend to post about three things. My niche is,
Jeremy (49:41.991)
you
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (49:58.842)
martial arts, so you'll see me throw up that sidekick, that's my favorite thing to do, and stunt-related stuff for film, and then the general lifestyle kind of posts, maybe some modeling, getting in front of the camera, maybe some stuff that I've shot, or fitness, or just in general, everyday life kind of things. And then after that, I think I post most on TikTok.
I did Mortal Kombat 1, the video game, and I posted like a cool stunt performer vlog on there. I think it may have gone unflagged for violence, but who knows? But anyways, also check me out on Mortal Kombat 1, the video game. You'll see a lot of my martial arts movement on there. I did a lot of different characters. So you'll see just...
Jeremy (50:38.234)
TikTok's the... Okay.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (50:52.642)
general movement in there. I'll try to get some clips when I finally get the game. I haven't really had a lot of downtime. So, yeah.
Jeremy (51:01.79)
Well, I wish you luck. Keep doing all the great things that you're doing. I'm going to throw it back to you in just a moment. Audience, make sure you follow Juliana. Check out all the things that she's got going. And if you want to throw back to the beginning of the episode, go check out her IMDB and the project we were talking about. Because I'm really looking forward to that one. That one's going to be a lot of fun. But now we're going to wrap. It's up to you to close the episode. How do you want to leave things with the audience? What do you want to say?
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (51:30.858)
I would say be the change that you want to see in the world. Absolutely. Like that's what I live by every day. And actually you said one of my favorite quotes. I say this to myself every day. How you do one thing is how you do everything. So wake up and choose to do hard things. Challenge yourself because feeling that pride of like I did that even though it was difficult.
Jeremy (51:31.406)
world.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (51:58.614)
You'll be addicted to that feeling and you'll continue to do it. And you'll, hey, I don't like the way that people treat other people. So you start to treat people well. It may not be the status quo. It may not be normal. You chose to do the different thing, the hard thing. And then you start to see, you start to inspire change. And so be the change that you want to see by choosing to do the hard stuff. Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. Choose to do things.
of love and you'll inspire things to come from love.
Jewelianna Ramos-Ortiz (52:33.942)
And anything is possible, definitely. All good.