By Michael Howard

January 27, 2026

For more than a decade, San Diego’s independent film scene has grown very slowly after Stu Segal’s studio essentially shut down. That growth did not stem from a single institution nor a sudden boom. No, it’s been a very slow accumulation, little by little. Networks have grown event by event, filmmakers trained class by class, and infrastructure assembled in fragments over time.

And you don’t have to tell Jodi Cilley how long it’s taken. Few people have been more directly involved in that building process than her, primarily as founder and president of the Film Consortium San Diego, whose impact has spanned across education, film exhibition, community organizing, and film financing every step of the way. 

The journey began for Cilley when she moved to San Diego in the early 2000s when she was just in her 20s. At the time, she was working at the homeless shelter Father Joe’s Villages and experimenting with photography on the side. 

“I wanted to be a writer,” she recalled when speaking with Vanguard Culture in early January of this year, “and I was really into photography at the time.”

Film entered her life almost accidentally when she was asked as part of her supervisory duties to participate in an exchange program with Yokohama, Japan. At the conclusion of the program, she was told she had the choice between delivering a live presentation or creating a video.

“I had never made anything video,” she admits. “But I was terrified of public speaking, so I was like, ‘I’ll make a video.’” 

That decision resulted in One World, a 15-minute documentary edited on a shelter computer using Final Cut Pro 3. The film explored diversity within a group home for unhoused teenagers that even went as far as filming footage across the border in Tijuana, highlighting how the shelter combined the youth of both nations. “We had the greatest time of my life,” she says of the experience. “I couldn’t wait to do it again.”

The irony was that upon arrival in Japan, she was still required to give the presentation. 

“I got there and they’re like, oh no, you have to give a presentation – you never said anything about a video,” she laughs about it now. But, Cilley is grateful for the experience, recalling the act of kindness the group extended to her. 

“They were kind enough to play the movie in a theater to an empty group because nobody was in there to watch it except me,” she said without rancor. “It lit the passion in me for sure,” Cilley explains. “It combined writing, photography, community, artists—everything I already loved.”

Rather than attending a conventional film school, Cilley learned filmmaking incrementally. Over the next several years, she acquired equipment, made projects independently, and eventually began teaching. She became involved with the Media Arts Center San Diego, first as a volunteer, then as an instructor, and eventually as lead faculty. “That was sort of my film school,” she says. “I learned everything about film there.”

Simultaneously, she pursued formal education in business. Between 2007 and 2010, she completed an MBA at San Diego State University, focusing on entrepreneurship. “I got really into venture capital,” she reports. “I thought, what a great job—you put money on crazy creatives.” That mindset would later become foundational to her vision for the Film Consortium San Diego.

Eventually, though, the workload was unsustainable. “I was an absolute disaster,” she admits. “Working a full-time job, going to grad school, living in a neighboring country – it was a lot.” By the end of her Masters Program, she burnt out and left her job at the shelter, but she carried forward an idea that would shape the next decade of her life: applying venture capital principles to film.

The concept behind the Film Consortium San Diego was initially pragmatic. “I didn’t really know any filmmakers or actors,” Cilley says. “So I thought, let’s work backwards. How do I get to know filmmakers?”

She launched the Film Consortium in 2012–2013, during a period when San Diego’s official film commission had shut down. The timing was both a challenge and an opportunity. “If the big organization that’s supposed to support filmmakers just shuts down,” she says, “there was a gap.”

Cilley spent months conducting research, meeting with city officials, and consulting industry veterans like Wally Schlatter, the longtime film commissioner credited with bringing Top Gun to San Diego. Her conclusion was blunt: the city’s film community existed as “a loose connection of people,” with few pathways for emerging filmmakers.

Asked why she wanted to launch a “consortium” specifically, Cilley insists it was intentional. “A consortium is a group of organizations that work together toward a common goal,” she explains. Her aim was not to compete with existing groups, but to aggregate them—to “build a table with stuff on it,” as she put it, rather than “fight over crumbs falling off the table.”

But surprisingly, that vision was not universally welcomed at the time. Cilley encountered resistance from established figures in the local industry. “They were either threatened by what I was doing or they were competitive,” she says. “And I’m like, competitive for what? There’s nothing here.”

She recalls being “sat down” by union members and long-established professionals. The criticism often centered on her refusal to prioritize attracting Los Angeles productions to San Diego. “People would say, ‘Go to LA and bring work,’” she lamented. “And I’d say, what do we have here to bring them to?” Her approach focused instead on grassroots development: students, first-time filmmakers, and infrastructure built from within. “If you focus on the students, you’ll continually grow,” she says.

Over time, the Film Consortium expanded into a multi-pronged organization. It hosts the San Diego Film Awards, San Diego Film Week, and partners with groups such as KPBS, the GI Film Festival San Diego, and University California San Diego. It has produced dozens of workshops and educational programs, including the Film Summit, which recently brought together 300 high school students from across the county.

“We’ve probably done 20 or 30 workshops over the years,” Cilley summarizes, covering filmmaking, writing, producing, and cinematography. She also administers the KPBS Explore program, a role she has held for over a decade. These efforts, she argues, have quietly expanded San Diego’s talent pool. “The quality of production for next to no money has escalated,” she says. “The acting has gotten really good. The filmmakers have gotten really good.”

For years, Cilley felt the momentum rested largely on her shoulders. “I took it on,” she admits. “But it wasn’t meant to be just me.” Inevitably, burnout followed. “I’m 13 years in on this. I’m tired,” she says.

In the last two years, however, she has observed a shift in the film community eco-system. New initiatives have emerged, including the Chula Vista Entertainment Complex (CVEC), more SAG-AFTRA events, and expanded efforts from San Diego Media Pros. “This is the most active I’ve ever seen it,” she says of the community. Panels, festivals, and collaborations are now happening independently of her leadership – a development she views as long overdue. “It’s what I wanted from the beginning,” she says. “But it takes years to build something.”

Despite the breadth of the Consortium’s activities, Cilley insists they were never the end goal. “The future goal is the original goal,” she says. That goal is a San Diego-based film fund, modeled on venture capital principles. The idea is straightforward but ambitious: pool investment capital, fund multiple low-budget films, and allow successful projects to subsidize the rest. “You invest in seven,” she says. “Two succeed, and those pay for everything.”

She points to Blumhouse Productions as a model. “They’re the most profitable company in Hollywood,” she says, citing their low-budget horror strategy and equity-based compensation model. “When I learned about them, it was validation that the idea works.”

Cilley believes she now has the prerequisites in place: a proven selection process from KPBS Explore, a large mailing list, fundraising experience, and an established filmmaker network. The limiting factor is time. To address that, the Film Consortium has paused the Film Awards until 2027. “I’m going to put that energy into building the film fund,” she says.

In the meantime, Cilley is candid when asked what advice she gives newcomers. “Don’t quit your day job,” she says. “This is not a financially lucrative business until it is – and that may take decades.”  She encourages accessible education and warns against debt. “Go to community college. Take my class. Don’t go into debt for film school,” she says. “This is a gig economy at best.”

The motivation, she emphasizes, must be intrinsic. “You’re going to have a lot of fun,” she says. “But you’re probably not going to make money.”

Cilley’s story is one of endurance, persistence and grit. Her work has unfolded incrementally, often amid skepticism, limited resources, and personal exhaustion. Yet the ecosystem she envisioned – fragmented but interconnected – now appears closer to reality than when she began. “I spent 13 years doing this for this reason,” she says. 

And it appears to be working.  The table, slowly, is being built.