THE OMNI SHOW

Jason Osder: ... like oh, I'm going to learn how to work a camera. I'm going to learn how to edit video. Of course, now, everyone, that's like you do it on your phone. But at the time, not everyone knew how to do that, and so I was like, "I want to learn how to do these new things. I want to learn new ways to communicate." I actually found something more. I found that mode I was looking for. I found an identity, a creative identity like, "What are you?" A documentary filmmaker.

Andrew J. Mason: You're listening to The Omni Show where we connect with the amazing community surrounding The Omni Group's award-winning products. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today, we learn how Jason Osder uses OmniGraffle. Hello and welcome to The Omni Show. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today, we get to talk to the associate professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, Jason Osder, and get to chat a little bit about his career arc thus far, what he's currently got going on in the works, and how he happens to use OmniGraffle. Jason, thanks for hanging out with us today.

Jason Osder: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the time.

Andrew J. Mason: For those that don't know, and we are honored by the way to have you, but to jump right in, for those that don't know, what took you down the path of documentary filmmaker/teacher? It's very evident that you have the creative instinct that wants to go and create great stuff, but also this desire to share what you've learned with other folks as well.

Jason Osder: Yeah, thank you. I mean, to be honest, there was a lot of happenstance involved. I went to graduate school. I went to film school and documentary in particular. And prior to that, I would say I had a desire to have a voice in a broad sense to interact with society, but I lacked a model or a mode to execute that. So I knew I wanted to do something that was involved culturally, socially, have a voice, but when I went to graduate school, I'd sort of reached a point where I wanted to go back to school, but I wanted to learn new tools. As an undergraduate, I studied philosophy and social sciences, and I knew if I was going to go back, I felt pretty accomplished at reading and writing and speaking. So if I was going to go back, I wanted to learn new tools, and that turned out to be media tools. So my motivation in going to graduate film school was still very, I wouldn't call it inspired. It was more tactical. And then, when I got to grad school and the people I worked with there and the curriculum and really studying documentary, I discovered something more than just tools, really, more than just... In my mind, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to learn how to work a camera. I'm going to learn how to edit video." Of course, now, everyone, that's like you do it on your phone, but at the time, not everyone knew how to do that. And so, I was like, "I want to learn how to do these new things. I want to learn new ways to communicate." I actually found something more. I found that mode I was looking for. I found an identity, a creative identity like, "What are you?" A documentary filmmaker. And so, that's kind of where I landed. And then, in one or two chapters later, I was out of school and was working a small business where we were doing video, still wasn't making my own films. I was working on them on the side. It's hard, but I did find that these tools I had were very marketable, and I was doing work in my field, work in communications, had a small business with a partner. And this was during the time where we were still transitioning to the first wave of nonlinear editing, and editing was going from a very specialized skill that you paid a lot of money to just be in the room with the machine and the person knew how to use it to where local news stations, places like NPR, businesses, and institutions of medium to large size were putting in their own editing rooms and training a larger swath of creative people how to edit. And so, our business sort of turned toward a little more of that training and consulting in this transitional phase. As part of that, I was at the time, did my first teaching under Apple's... At the time, it was Final Cut Pro, their certification program. This probably has a lot of overlap with the people that do LinkedIn learning. So I was teaching professionals how to edit, three-day classes, very intensive. And during that time, so the business had sort of... We were still doing some client-based work, but we were doing a lot of teach me how to fish type work. And then, I had an opportunity to teach a first one class at the George Washington University, found that I really enjoyed that format, enjoyed teaching undergraduate students. And then, I had the opportunity to move into a full-time teaching there and really enjoyed that. And then, it also kind of cycles back around because it allowed me to move up my creative work and this film project, Let the Fire Burn, that I'd been kind of cooking in the background for a while, but was having trouble getting traction on, now, I had the imprimatur of a university and more time and a job that encouraged, even required, me to have my own creative output, and I was able to then turn a corner and be more successful as an independent filmmaker.

Andrew J. Mason: That is fabulous. And what an arc that leads well into the next question about Let the Fire Burn. You mentioned this has been on one of the back burners of your mind for a while. How do you decide on that as the subject? You say, I have this voice of creative expression that I found, especially using the tools as vehicles through which to express them, and suddenly, I find myself wanting to share a viewpoint on the world at large that perhaps can make an impact in a way that argument can't, convincing can't, but just letting a story just sit there and tell itself. What's special about that movie for you and what's special about what showed up for you as you were creating it? Did you have the end in mind from the beginning, or is that something that just kind of appeared over the time of creating it?

Jason Osder: Yeah, thank you. So probably many people don't know, Let the Fire Burn is about an incident that happened in Philadelphia in 1985. A group called MOVE came into conflict with the Philadelphia Police. Ultimately, it turned very violent. Over 10,000 rounds were fired into a building where they were barricaded. A bomb was dropped on the roof of that house where they had built an additional structure up there called a bunker, and the fire was left to burn. Five children and six adults were killed in the fire. Three city blocks were destroyed. And it's a story that if you happen to be from Philadelphia and are roughly my age, you know exactly what I'm talking about if I say in the MOVE fire. That's not necessarily true as you move out from that. So I grew up with the story. I was roughly the age of some of the kids who were killed. And so, for me, it was this in stages. First, this shock and a particular type of shock in that I think all of us are, maybe not all of us, but for those who are privileged to have a safe childhood, a lot of that is about being protected by your parents being sort of told a white lie that the world is a safe and fair place, and if you play by the rules, things will work out for you. And then, at some point, something happens from the outside world, from outside your family in the news where you're like, "Oh, the world is not a fair place. Bad things happen to good people. The police won't always protect you. The powers that be won't always be on the right side." And my parents' generation will always remember where they are when they heard JFK was killed, and there's a whole generation now, essentially millennials, that will always remember 9/11. But for me, it was this fire. So it really made an impact for me in terms of breaking that childhood frame like a loss of innocence popping that bubble. And then, I went away not too long after that. I went away to college out of state, and I thought that everyone who was my age would know about this, but it turned out they didn't. And only a few years later, it had already become an incident that I thought it was American history, but it turned out it was just local history. And so, that really impacted me in this next chapter. And then, as I mentioned, I went to film school, and I sort of found a method, a rubric, what makes a favorable documentary idea, and I put this thing that kind of what always bothered. First, it bothered me just morally. And then, a second time bothered me that people didn't know about it. And then, I put it into this formula of what makes a good documentary. And I thought, yeah, this is worth doing. And then, I think the thing that developed in the process is that the film is entirely comprised of archival material. There's no talking head. There's no narration, and in a lot of ways, what I wanted to achieve with the film stayed consistent. I wanted to let people know about the story. I wanted to present sort of a morality tale. It's a film or a story in my opinion that has a lot of but what abouts. Every time you think you have a grasp on, "Oh, I can put this into a pre-made mold. I know what to think about this," then it takes a twist. It takes a turn, but I didn't know that a good way to achieve that would be using an all archival treatment, and there were hearings that were televised, which we got access to, so that provided a backbone and a spine that gave us a lot of leeway, storytelling without necessarily having to go to a narrator or a talking head. So that's kind of how the film evolved.

Andrew J. Mason: Very cool to get to hear kind of this perfect storm for what that story arc meant to you personally growing up and then also the, "Oh, here's a perspective that deserves to be shared with the larger world." I think that honestly, it does make for a great documentary, honestly. Talk to me a little bit about OmniGraffle. How did you first come across Omni Group and OmniGraffle? Was there a filmmaker in you that needed to map a story, or was it a teacher that needed to diagram an idea or just the visual thinking UX kind of slice of your brain that showed up there?

Jason Osder: Yeah. The first test I remember doing with OmniGraffle were really had more to do with interactive design and information architecture. The information architecture, I feel like is a term that maybe has even gone out of style in favor of UX design. But at the time, we called it information. And so, in the period of my career where I was doing more open-ended media work, it was both a period where non-linear editing was more common, and also, I don't want to say websites were becoming more common because websites certainly existed, but the necessity in the communications and marketing world to be web first and a lot of marketing companies that were more rooted in print design, magazine advertising, even direct mail and things like that were putting big budgets behind websites and interactive marketing. I'm part of that more open-ended part of my career where I was doing that kind of media and communications work. That information architect role was one where I found a lot of traction. And that's when I believe when I first started using OmniGraffle, particularly for site mapping and wireframing. And the way I, at the time, understood the information architect role, which again, we might call it something different, but it's something that is interactive or metaphorically three dimensions, something that you can walk through like a building, the architecture metaphor again, Prior to the expensive process of building it, how do you communicate not just what it's going to look like in a static sense, but what it's going to feel like in a tactile sense and what it's going to be like to be at that virtual place? And then, again, the metaphor does, in my opinion, play out in terms of, well, architectural drawings are how you communicate those things to the people paying for your building and the people building your building. And a similar set of diagramming rules existed then or was being developed then, still exists now, in terms of mapping content often called site mapping, but there's some variations on that and wireframing, setting up individual pages in terms of their layout but not their visual design. So not the colors and the fonts, but there's going to be a picture here, and it's this big and the top headline, next headline. And again, we might call that the floor plan and the elevation in architecture, and then architecture has other types of drawings that help you further imagine and schematics and things like that. And so, that set of communication tools, the purpose of which was to diagram and visualize interactive projects for both, again, kind of the account side, if you will, the people paying for it and the people building it was I think the first real use case that I found OmniGraffle to be just excellent for.

Andrew J. Mason: So cool. So cool to hear. Talk to me about the process flow element of your thinking style. You mentioned multiple use case scenarios in brainstorming. Do you find yourself, regardless of tool, whether OmniGraffle or index card or however it shows up, but flow charting, something like a documentary in the way that you would flow chart a user trying to complete a task? So there's branching paths. There's dead ends. What does the audience need to know at each step? Is there a linear kind of mapping out that shows up or is there more of, especially in documentary, you have the unique opportunity to let the footage tell the story that sort of emerges as you go?

Jason Osder: Yeah. I mean, you bring up in my mind the other big use case, which is like the index card idea, and it's a little more... I mean, documentaries are linear. You push play at the beginning, and it's going to play to the end. In their nature, they are linear, but the process is not linear. And traditionally, and this is not just documentary, many creative people use that index card and not just the index, but quite literally use index cards. I mean, I work with a lot of academics, and I'll go to their offices, and their new book will be up on a bulletin board in index cards. And the beauty of the index cards is it's less about people following a path through it, and it's about the creative mind being able to see it and shuffle it around. And I think that's quite relevant to documentary filmmaking and many other creative processes. And I would say this is the other big thing that I have found OmniGraffle useful for is as a substitute for virtual index cards, right? It's flexibility. It sounds straightforward, but if you just imagine the index card made with a large heading and then a few bullet points on it, just like an index card, you make a box. The text itself becomes attached to that box. You can group things in a meaningful way, you can slide them around in a very easy, straightforward way, and that's very much, but the end goal is something linear, but the process benefits from all that shuffling around. And then, I'm an experienced editor. You have also experience in post-production, and non-linear editing allows us to do similar shuffling of actual content, but it's not as quick as moving index cards around, right?

Andrew J. Mason: Mm-hmm.

Jason Osder: It's certainly quicker than if you rewind a long ways to linear editing where you really scripted stuff out before the edit session because essentially, editing was a process of playing on one deck and recording on another deck. So you really had to make your decisions ahead of time. It's still simpler and less expensive, less time-consuming to sit together and say, "Well, let's try it this way. And what if we did this and talk through it? What if we did that shuffling around?" If you happen to be listening only to audio, I'm waving my hands around in a silly way. But yeah, that index card idea or, quote, unquote, "virtual index cards" and my handwriting is poor, so I like the idea of index cards, but the actual writing of index cards is annoying to me. So OmniGraffle is a great tool to take that index card idea and move it into a very flexible digital space, which I really value.

Andrew J. Mason: It's really obvious for anybody that's looked through where you've headed career-wise, lynda.com, LinkedIn Learning, your current work in academia, that you're clearly drawn to just not just using the tools, but also teaching them and internalizing it and making it useful for somebody else. What is it about that that says, "I'm not just somebody that is interested in getting to have my own self-expression," but you used the same phrase earlier, just teaching someone to fish?

Jason Osder: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. That's a deep question that maybe requires a level of self-analyzation that I don't necessarily have.

Andrew J. Mason: You got 30 seconds.

Jason Osder: But I think I'm a process-oriented person that I enjoy or the way my brain works is to try to break something down into steps and then figure out what's the process, and to have good process is to have a good outcome. And so, I think that runs through the way I try to do my work and what I try to teach is that especially in an intro-level media class, you're not necessarily going... The first time you learn how to edit or the first time you learn how to build something interactive, you might like the result the day you do it, but you're going to look at it in a few years and be like, "Oh, that's embarrassing." But what you're learning is not necessarily the specific decisions you're making on that project, but how to conceptualize a process. And I think that's what I would say is if there's something about me or the way I think that runs through all of what I do, it is that process-oriented thinking.

Andrew J. Mason: What advice would you have for somebody that is maybe, and I'll leave it open-ended, take it any direction you want, that is either a beginner in OmniGraffle or a beginner in process thinking, visual thinking? What advice do you have for somebody that is just getting started with either the tools of that or wrapping their head around something complex and using visual thinking to solve a problem or to achieve a goal? What mistakes should they avoid? What are some maybe good first steps for somebody that's really trying to lean in that direction?

Jason Osder: Yeah, I guess I'm not really sure. I guess for me, that motivation that we talked about of wanting to tell stories that made a difference, that motivated me to do a lot of things and learn a lot of things that were tangential to that goal but then paid off. So I think you need to have an openness to learning things and working through indirect paths. That is I started teaching because I had the opportunity, turned out I really enjoyed it. Then, teaching led me to a place where I was able to execute on a film project that really inspired me to begin with. So there's a lot of indirect paths, but if you're learning and you're able to use your time and your skills in a productive way, I would say have faith that that's moving you towards your end goals, whether it looks like it's specifically doing that at the moment, or you may find new goals along the way. Initially, I didn't sign to be a documentary filmmaker, but then I did. But then, teaching became something that I found along the way that then helped me to get to those goals and did become a goal in itself to be an inspiration and something that certainly more than a paycheck, right? Teaching is a big part of my identity, both these things are, and both were sort of found along the way and found in a tangential relationship to each other, but then looking back, it's a story that makes sense, but it didn't necessarily because I didn't know where I was along the path as I was going through it, but I can look back and make it make sense.

Andrew J. Mason: Man, yeah. I think wanting to organize or categorize information for its own sake outside of just appreciating the beauty of what something looks like when it's organized in a pleasing way, maybe a form of sickness, so having a means to an end that you're working towards, I think it makes a lot of sense, especially when it allows you to take those little and then bigger swings along the path as you're trying to discover what is it that is working for me, what feels right, what's a part of who I consider to be who I am. I love this conversation. Talk to us a little bit about current reality and then also about what you're getting into. You have a film currently out Who Killed Alex Odeh? I think it's called.

Jason Osder: Mm-hmm.

Andrew J. Mason: And talk to us a little bit about what that encompasses, what that's about, and where you're headed next after that.

Jason Osder: Yeah, thank you. So yeah, Who Killed Alex Odeh? We premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year, 2026. We actually, I'm saying we because I have a co-director, his name is Will Youmans, and we actually won an award at Sundance, a special jury prize for journalistic excellence, so that was great. As an independent filmmaker, Sundance is where you want to be. And then, getting to walk up on the stage and accept an award is a really special moment. The film had an international premiere at Berlinale, Berlin International Film Festival, also one of the top film festivals in the world. We've been to several film festivals and have more festivals coming up and planned for a theatrical release in the fall. The film is a story ironically or coincidentally also another incident from 1985. Alex Odeh was a Palestinian American activist, teacher, and poet. He was killed by a tripwire bomb in 1985 in Santa Ana, California. The FBI had named suspects at the time of the bombing, and they were never brought to justice. And the story, unlike Let the Fire Burn which very much is a time capsule, where I think the quality of the story was to see the past almost in isolation, almost like a stage play, this story takes this investigation up to the present day and shows a lot of connections between this unsolved murder and the present political state of Israel, Palestine, and the US. So yeah, that's what I've been up to. It's exciting. In Let The Fire Burn, I did work with some subjects but not that closely, and none of the footage we shot was in the final film. But in this case, we really formed relationships with Alex's family members, his widow and his daughters, as well as a journalist named David Sheen, who we followed for a number of years who was investigating the case. So it's been different and rewarding to go to these film festivals with people who have real stakes in the story and see the validation that they see in having the story told, being seen in both a literal and sort of symbolic sense. So yeah, that's been my present day and continue to teach. Always pleased Let the Fire Burn continues after 10 plus years to have a lot of resonance and a lot of play, was listed recently in New York Times list of movies we loved in this century and continues to pop up on big lists. To a certain extent, a lot of this is I tend to do... My core work is very serious in the sense of it deals with, on some level, violence, political violence, people who suffer at the hands of the state or extremism. And so, on one hand, you always need to be... As I said, we're celebrating the completion of a film, going to film festivals, but we're going with the widow of someone and someone who lost their father. So it's serious stuff, and it's stuff that is still sadly relevant. Let the Fire Burn got a lot of new recognition in 2020 around the Black Lives Matter protest. It was listed in a number of places as the film to watch to understand these issues. And again, I'm very proud of that, and it fulfills my need to have that voice and feel like I'm contributing something, but it also is a reminder of no one is looking at either of these films and saying, "Oh, glad we don't have those problems anymore." So it's serious stuff, but I'm glad to be able to have the privilege to participate in it.

Andrew J. Mason: Grateful for your time spending with us, just kind of breaking down a little bit of your career thus far. Excited to see where things continue to head. How can folks connect with you, what you're up to, find out more about what current reality happens to be if they listen to this a little bit later than 2026?

Jason Osder: Well, so you can always go to... I have a very standard website, my name, jasonosder.com. Always a good place to see updates, and you can also contact me through that. Although apparently, you did contact me through that [inaudible 00:29:01] get back to you, but that's a good starting place anyway. Instagram is also fine. I'm not very active, but I will see messages, anything like that.

Andrew J. Mason: It's perfect. Jason, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. It's been an honor.

Jason Osder: Thank you. Thank you for the great questions. I appreciate it.

Andrew J. Mason: Hey, and thank all of you for listening today, too. You can find us on Mastodon at theomnishow@omnigroup.com. You can also find out everything that's happening with the Omni Group at omnigroup.com/blog.