Jason Speir

Speir's career doesn't follow the standard film-school-to-feature pipeline — and honestly, that's what makes it interesting to track. His professional engineering background gave him a foothold in a world far removed from production sets, but he eventually pivoted toward filmmaking and co-founded HYST, a production company oriented around original narrative work (IMDB). The transition from engineer to creative lead is the kind of thing that sounds like a logline itself. On the directing side, *I'm Not A Robot* (2023) marks one of his earliest verified credits as a filmmaker — a short that, even at limited runtime, signals the kind of story Speir gravitates toward: contained, concept-driven, with a title that tells you there's something to unpack before you even press play. *Gatekeepers* followed in 2024, extending his short-film output and presumably his range as a director working within tight constraints, which is — for what it's worth — one of the harder things to do well in this format. As head of creative development at HYST, Speir's role extends beyond directing individual projects. He's shaping what the company makes and why, which is a different kind of creative muscle than sitting in the director's chair. Whether that dual role as both filmmaker and development executive becomes his defining professional identity is still an open question — but it's the kind of question that tends to answer itself over the next few years of output.