Jenna Payne

Jenna Payne is a writer, director, and producer with a penchant for dangerous women, buckets of blood, and fast talking. She won an award on her first ever short film, Feline Frenzy, and challenges herself to move forward with each project.

For the past few years, Jenna has battled the US healthcare system in addition to autoimmune disease and channeled her rage into a feature-length dark comedy/medical revenge called Hysteria. The script has been recognized in multiple industry contests, and a short film, directed mostly remotely during Covid-19 lockdowns, that depicts some of the barriers to diagnosis and care toured film festivals like Final Girls Berlin, Access: Horror, and Another Hole in the Head.

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10 Trivia Facts

  1. I used to DJ all vinyl sets in bars in New York, mostly post-punk and new wave.
  2. I have dabbled in 3 languages badly (Spanish, German, and Portuguese) and used to be conversational in French and Russian.
  3. I bake an excellent Southern-style pecan pie, but I prefer Trisha Yearwood's Sweet Potato Souffle recipe. (I make mine with non-dairy milk & gluten free flour)
  4. I co-created a science fair project in the third grade that measured kids' blood pressure after playing Sonic the Hedgehog vs Mortal Kombat. We were able to confirm that violent video games do indeed get the blood up.
  5. I studied journalism and interned at an international wire agency, a renowned newspaper, and a couple of well-known pop culture magazines but ended up graduating into the first internet media implosion and not working as a journalist.
  6. I have also lived in Belgium, Russia, and New Orleans.
  7. We have three cats, and one is the best cat on film I've ever worked with.
  8. I strong-armed my high school district into purchasing video equipment to start a morning news show and ran it.
  9. I passed the first desk at Harper Collins with a mystery novella when I was 12.
  10. I have worked many jobs in film from wardrobe to craft services to post coordinator to production accounting, but if I had to choose something that I don't do already, I really love foley artistry.