Emely Taveras 
3R Studios is Jersey City’s first independent community-driven streaming platform. Its founder, Juan Diego Roque, has spent nearly a decade shooting music videos, producing documentaries, and building community through film. Now he’s trying something bigger: what he calls “indie HBO.” Read on for more about Juan Diego Roque and Jersey City’s 3R Studios.
Inside the Studio at Mana Contemporary
The filmmaker, who goes by Diego, met me at the Mana Contemporary, where his studio is located. Diego, his NJCU intern Gaby, and I talked while the equipment stayed tucked toward the back. On one of his studio doors, a section of Polaroids features previous visitors. The first thing I noticed, though, wasn’t the setup. It was the Dune collection on his shelf. The books, the vinyl score, the whole thing. “I’m obsessed,” Diego admits. It’s a fitting detail for someone who’s spent years learning how to build worlds of his own. 3R, short for Rhythm, Root, and ROQ, is the latest and most ambitious of those worlds. But the real story starts with a kid watching The Matrix with his dad and landing, years later, in this very studio.
How Diego Fell in Love With Film
Diego traces his love of film back to those early days. “You have to thank my dad,” he says. “He showed me everything. The Matrix when I was young. District 9. That one really stuck with me. It’s about aliens on Earth and how we mistreat them. It parallels reality in a way that hit different.”
By the time he got to college, still undeclared as a junior at NJCU, he spent an entire summer digging into old movies: Hitchcock, French New Wave, Humphrey Bogart. “I was like, alright, let me see what a major in this looks like.” He enrolled in the media arts program. It’s the same school where he now speaks at open houses in front of prospective students, the same program that sends him interns like Gaby.
Learning the Hard Way + Building a Career
The path from there wasn’t exactly linear. Like most young creatives, Diego got burned early. His first real client paid him $200 for a music video. Full production, full edit. Then the client asked for revisions and more videos for the same price. “I didn’t know about deposits. I didn’t know how to price,” he says. “That guy swindled me. But you learn.”
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The lessons kept stacking. He worked weddings through a production company to pay the bills while shooting music videos on the side with local artists like Kyle BLVD, a rapper whose photo still hangs on Diego’s studio wall. He made documentaries with poets like Rashad Wright. He helped brands like Liberty Science Center, the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, and Michter’s Whiskey tell their stories. Michter’s even flew him out to Kentucky. “I’m a storyteller,” Diego says. “Wherever stories can be expanded and shown, I can fit right in.”
Emerge: Where Community Took Shape
The freelance work was good, and it still pays for everything, but Diego always felt the pull toward something bigger. The first version of that something was called Emerge. Working with the Monira Foundation, a nonprofit also located at Mana Contemporary, Diego started curating showcases in the building’s basement. What began as open mics grew into full-scale themed events like cyberpunk nights and film noir nights. He would world-build entire immersive experiences, handling procurement, talent booking, vendor setup, everything. “That was where I really tapped into community,” he says.
He even received an Arts and Culture Trust Fund grant of about $6,000 to keep the showcases going. But financially and physically, he burned out. “The ideas I had… the grant just wasn’t enough. And mostly the toll. So many lines of communication, and artists are sensitive. No matter what, you leave somebody out and they feel bad.” He paused Emerge, and went back to production work, rebuilding his income and his energy. But the itch didn’t go away.
From a Book + Ambient Music to 3R
During the in-between years, Diego started experimenting. He wrote a productivity book called The Rhythm of Doing, a 90-page guide to how he organizes his time, runs his projects, and stays on track. “People would always ask me, ‘Wait, aren’t you shooting? How are you also doing these events?'” he says. “So I tried to put what I developed internally into something people could hold.” At the same time, he was exploring ambient music for YouTube. Long-form meditative tracks, the kind that run for eight hours. He made original compositions, repeated them, and uploaded them.
Then he noticed something. “I’m looking at channels posting every week. How are they doing that? And then I learned. They’re using AI.” He stepped back. Still, he kept showing up at events with his book and a laptop playing his production reel. That combo became the foundation of what’s now 3R: rhythm for the book, root for the ambient music, ROQ for the cinematic visuals. “I looked at all the work I’d done, all the stuff scattered across YouTube and Vimeo and everywhere else, and I just decided: no more. I’m bringing everything under one roof.”
Launch + Early Momentum
3R officially launched on July 1st 2025. Later that month, Diego was at Loud Garden, Lincoln Park’s first-ever music festival, with a tent, a display, and a dream. “OneDay and Lisi from Midnight Market put that festival together,” Diego said. “I saw the flyer, reached out, and we worked out a deal. I’d shoot the recap content for a documentary they were developing. In return, they gave me a presence at the festival.” That presence turned into visibility. People flocked to the 3R tent. Diego gathered signups, spread the word, and walked away knowing what had to come next: screenings.
Screenings in Jersey City
He hosted the first one in August 2025, right inside his studio. He flipped the space into a cinema with a projector on the back wall, 15 to 20 people on chairs, and a popcorn machine in the hall. The same cozy room where we sat for this interview once held an audience and a panel table. “It was invite-only. I didn’t know how it would go,” he says. “But people resonated with the work. We had a panel after. It felt awesome.” The second screening, in September, was a stress test. “My goal was to pack the room. Make it uncomfortable,” he laughs. “I wanted proof of concept. Can I fill this? Do people actually want this?” The answer was yes.
By November 2025, Diego had partnered with Michael, who owns a new event space called utilitylab, also at Mana Contemporary. The third screening happened there, in a room actually built for it. “The first real event in that space was mine. That meant a lot.” He doesn’t plan on flipping his own studio into a cinema again. Not when he has access to larger spaces now.
What 3R Streams Now
Today, 3R streams a mix of short-form documentaries, skits, comedy shorts, and original series. Diego built everything himself: the platform, the rollout strategy, the custom intro videos. “We have our own version of that AMC Nicole Kidman thing,” he says. “Except it’s Jersey City, and it’s much more indie grassroots.”
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There’s the Vault series, featuring interviews with artists Diego has worked with over the years, some dating back to the Emerge days. There’s Root, a doc series where Diego explores different subjects in his own meandering, curious style. The first installment was about abstract expressionism. He learned to paint for it. He interviewed his father. He talked to a working artist with a massive studio just down the hall at Mana. “The episode is really about process,” he says. “How do you paint rhythm? What does movement look like on a canvas?” There’s Hysteria, a horror series in development, co-written with a local writer named Samantha. There’s Burnt Toast, a Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele-style sketch project he’s building with his collaborator Jordan. And there’s a growing roster of 3R Collaborators: other filmmakers who screen their work on the platform and get interviews, write-ups, and promotion in return.
Building Without Outside Funding
Diego doesn’t have outside funding. He doesn’t have a staff. What he has is an internship program and a handful of close collaborators who believe in the project. Gaby came from NJCU. More students are coming from Montclair State. “With my first internship, I didn’t walk away with anything. No project, no portfolio piece. I learned what not to do,” he says. “Now I make sure every intern finishes with something they made. Gaby is developing a short doc with a local small business. She came up with the name for her own section of the platform: 3R Beginners.”
He’s also building relationships across the city. Mike from Art House came to the November screening. Hudpost is on his radar. The Jersey City Arts and Culture Trust Fund knows his name from Emerge. “People are slowly becoming believers,” Diego says. “That’s really what it is. Once you come, you see everything, and you get it.”
Why 3R Exists
When I ask Diego why he’s doing all this, why not just keep freelancing and keep things simple, he pauses. “You know, Netflix is opening offices here. Paramount has a presence. Film is alive in New Jersey,” he says. “But there’s red tape. Stuff we can’t access unless you know the right people. 3R is something different. It’s local. It’s ours. It’s built by the community for the community.”
He leans back. “I’m big on ownership. If I can’t own property because it’s so hard now, then I’m building digital real estate. This is my plot of land. And people can come and build with me.”
Making Space for What Comes Next
At the last screening, Diego noticed a younger guy walking around with a camera, snapping photos of the performers. “That was me,” he says. “I used to go to events, shoot artists behind the scenes, DM them. ‘Hey, I got some cool photos of you.’ That’s how I started.” He’s trying to create that space again. Not just for himself, but for whoever comes next.
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