Q&A with Head Videographer Jasper | Advice, influences, international shoots and where we are going!

I'm Jasper. I'm the owner of Yellow Glove Productions. Yellow Glove Productions is a video production company. We're based in Lester, but we travel all over the world making incredible video content.

When did you start?

I think Yellow Glove Productions has been going since 2016 I think. It is been a while, but since then, we really started out with focusing more on weddings and telling story of couples stay. And from there, it's sort of gone from the budget weddings to the higher end weddings, and then I wanted to push the corporate side of things and just make small businesses stories more interesting, and even just gain the word out about small businesses because that's one thing I'm really passionate about. It's not just filmmaking and video. It's just the whole concept of business and supporting local things like that.

Starting with small businesses, offering them videos that are affordable and not only affordable, but are actually going to make a difference. Taking that whole storytelling approach to businesses, and that's what we've been doing over the past year now. Since the start of the pandemic, that gave us a chance to approach businesses with a way of communicating to customers while they can't come into shops or can't see each other in person. From there, that's just grown and it's just been sort of skyrocketed since then.

What influences your filming style?

I think a lot of, it sounds very pretentious, but I just love European cinema, anything that's not Hollywood, anything with subtitles, basically, that's where I'm at. I find it very hard now to watch a lot of Hollywood films in the cinema because I'm such now after watching so many things coming out of Turkey, France, all these European countries and producing incredible stories, very often with a lot less gear than the Hollywood films because it's all story driven. That's what keeps the interest going. My approach comes from European cinema. I'd say just that story driven concept that you don't need all the gear for as long as you've got solid story in place. Directors like Thomas Vinterberg, Michael Haneke, very dark subject matters, but told in such like an interesting way that I don't think Hollywood's even ready for after 20 years.

Best place I've been to filming is probably Market Harbor. No, best place I filmed in Dusseldorf. I didn't get a much of a chance to explore, and it was just quite a journey getting there. It was late, couldn't work out how to get the train and they eventually got there, stayed there really nice B and B had the best meal of my life because it was such a long day, and then the shoot all went really well. People were really nice to me and then I got a free ride to the airport. But in terms of that, just going through the sort of countryside there and stuff, it was just so nice. Isn't it? That was my first shoot abroad. I think that holds a special place.

What are the perks of your job?

I can go anywhere because video is such a valuable thing to have now. I can approach a lot of places and say, I could do you a video and in return this. I went out to Switzerland and I've been to this gym before on a trial run and it's honestly the most amazing gym ever. And I take a lot of what I've experienced in Switzerland in terms of customer service and how you treat someone that's interested, not just a customer, but who's interested in your product. Taking that across into the customer service we do, but I approached this gym that I've been to and I said to them, because they weren't running this free trial offer anymore. I said, "Oh, would you mind if I created some video content for you, and in returning I can train for a week or two, whatever it was?" Yeah, it all went ahead. And then because of that, I saw on the email chat, they really liked it and there was something that they'd be looking to continue with in the future.

Yeah. I think moments like that is just really cool being able to create something, and that was with really minimal kits where we know what I could fit in hand luggage. I think it was just one or two lenses, a microphone that was just a clip on one, and I think that was it. I wasn't even able to bring a tripod across, but it's all handheld, but very story based as well.

How do you connect internationally?

I think in terms of how international connections come across and get made, stuff like LinkedIn's super powerful now. As soon as you put video content out online, the Internet's really international place. It's not like the local Facebook group. You're out there for the world to see and if you get the keywords right, or you get your SEO right, your video content strikes the right chord with someone in another country, halfway across the world or just over the channel, then they're going to get in touch and ask you about what you do.

What would you say to new creators?

Some people say start out with your phone and things like that. Whereas I don't think the phone is the best approach because it's your phone. You're using it for other stuff as well. I think just get a semi-decent camera, get used from MPB or something like that, get a microphone because story driven, people talking is always really important, so get a decent lab mic, a decent camera and then some basic, even if you can't get a small LED panel or a couple of LED panels off Amazon, just get an understanding of how to use lighting, things like negative fill when it comes to putting someone by a window and maybe blocking out some of the sun, so it doesn't fill the whole room. There's loads of stuff you can do where, like I said, I've walked into places, offering a video in exchange for some membership somewhere and all I've used is one camera, one lens and a microphone, and it's been an eye opener for the way they market their business.

Advice for your younger self?

What would I say to myself when starting Yellow Glove is probably buy even more lighting earlier, something like that. I don't know. I think I wouldn't do anything different essentially because it's all quite a long learning process with video. Maybe just take advantage of people being around and getting help with more creative projects because I've done creative projects in the past but it's finding like-minded people to do them with as well is always the hardest thing, so it's easy. I always think that documentary is one of the easiest things to do creatively because it can just be you in the microphone. Whereas I think going back in the past, I'd like to do more short film based stuff, more like that. Yeah.

What are your aims for 2022?

In terms of where we are aiming for 2022, we want to get something on TV. Whether that is a one second clip in an advert, whether that's something we assisted on or whether we did the whole thing, something on TV because that I think for an ego point of view, maybe that'd be a nice thing, but it would just be quite an achievement for the company itself. And then just producing things where we've been approached with a brief and then we've taken the whole creative lead on it as well. Having that trust rather than people coming with us and saying, this is what we'd like to do. Can you film this? And hand the role to Joe for a couple of marketing agencies do, which is understandable because that's what they've got to did that for the client.

But people coming to us, entrusting us with a whole creative brief, whether that's acted out, whether that's game models in, things like that, I think getting that trust can be done through showing what you've done previously, building up that body of creative work like we've been doing so far. But again, a lot of stuff we've been doing, we've had the opportunity to create creative shots with people within the business. But I think we need to start now really start creating spec adverts.

Essentially, adverts that we've had no brief form making, so I was saying earlier in the studio about creating an advert for a big, well known water company that I want to do. But again, it's not been briefed by them, but it would just be a client that we're aiming to get and creating something on that scale, taking some time to create it, maybe a couple of days for a shoot and really focusing on each shot, what that's going to mean, storyboarding, everything, the color palette, everything like that, and start creating those.