LAFAYETTE PARISH — For Jason Beard, it all started with sound.
“Music has always just been my biggest passion,” he said. “I wasn’t really disciplined enough to become a musician, but I was disciplined enough to help musicians shape their sound.”
That discipline—and curiosity—sparked what’s now a full-time creative career. Beard, a Lafayette-based media specialist, has built a name for himself ,“Usually I’m like a one man crew, handling two cameras, doing the sound, and doing the lighting and all that,” he said.
Before the cameras, Beard spent over three years studying audio in an accelerated program. He graduated in 2018 and quickly found his footing in the industry. But in 2020, everything shifted.
“I went to school for audio for three and a half years, it was an accelerated program, graduated in ’18 and then just kinda hit the ground running with it,” he said. “And then randomly picked up a camera in 2020 and then just started making stuff.”
That “stuff” took him from Louisiana to places like Nashville, where he worked with emerging talent and honed his storytelling style through music videos and creative collaborations.
“Because I went to school for music, I wanted to get into music videos and shooting music videos and that was literally the first thing I did,” Beard said.
But the road eventually brought him back home to Lafayette—a place he once thought he’d have to leave to succeed.
“I came back here and I started doing this,” he said. “I used to have that kind of perspective about Louisiana and Lafayette in general—just like, ‘Oh, if I wanna make something of myself I need to go to a bigger city like Nashville and stuff like that,’ but I feel like you can kind of make your dreams come true anywhere.”
That belief now drives his work—and his decision to dive into freelancing full time.
“I was just like, ok I’m just not gonna do day jobs anymore, I’m just gonna do this full time,” Beard said. “Which was… that was hard. But I had enough confidence in myself to be able to just say, "Ok I'm gonna devote literally all of my time and practically all of my money to this.”
Inside his newly opened studio space, the walls are still mostly bare. But Beard sees them as a blank canvas—ready for the kind of storytelling he hopes will shape the city’s creative future.
“You just gotta go out there and you gotta meet people, because there’s people here that are trying to do cool stuff too,” he said.
For Beard, that kind of local connection is just as important as the work itself. Whether it's capturing live performances or building visuals for artists trying to break through, he’s all in.
And while the freelance life comes with its challenges, Beard keeps his mindset simple: “I just don't get stressed bro,” he said. “I just try not to stress out about things that aren't in my control.”
