Jimi Lund – Director of Story Film and Photography
Lived most of my life in Bradford.
Flunked my A-levels at school, mostly through laziness. Came out with 1 pass, just, in History.
Worked in odd jobs for 2 years before deciding I needed to do more with my life.
I loved football and films, and I wasn’t good enough to be a pro footballer.
Looked round the National Media Museum (now the SMM) and liked the TV studio set-up there. Especially the vision-mixer job.
Wondered if I could be a vision-mixer on Match Of The Day!
Decided to see if I could get into Uni to do a film degree.
Staffordshire Uni would take me if I re-sat my English Literature A-level.
Went to night school at Bradford College for a year, whilst working full time.
Different man now, more determined, I worked hard.
Passed my exam. Grade A.
Loved my time at Uni but only left with a very average 2:2, due to a combination of not working hard enough, and finding the course being too much film theory and not enough film practical.
Didn’t really know how to go about finding “industry” work after leaving Uni.
Worked, unhappily, in a bank for a couple of years.
Discovered that Bradford Uni did a course that involved a lot of film making and was almost 100% practical work. Was reluctant to do it though as I would be 30 when I completed it. Was convinced otherwise (thankfully) and worked much harder at it.
Passed with a 2:1 and some good skills in camerawork and editing.
Felt much more confident trying to find work now and the Uni had also introduced us to some people in the industry.
Quickly found work at a Production company in Leeds and relished it. I decided I wanted to become an editor.
After a couple of years there, I left as I was no closer to getting any editing work and I was getting paid less than national minimum wage for the hours I was working.
I was despondent as I had made some good friends there but felt the company hadn’t supported or nurtured me.
I wasn’t skilled or experienced enough to become a freelance editor yet and I didn’t know where else I could work.
I had a friend who let me live with him for very little rent and I got a job working weekends as a chef to earn just enough money to survive.
In my days and evenings I filmed anything I could and practised editing until I felt I was good enough to go freelance.
I managed to get in with a couple of companies, including my old workplace and then worked as a freelance editor for about 10 years.
During that time, I had stayed in touch with my lecturers at Bradford University and I was brought in to teach an editing module to the Masters students. I did this for 7 years.
I missed not using my old camera skills learned at Uni, so I purchased a camera and started to get work doing that also.
This led to me starting to pick-up my own clients, doing the whole production.
3 years ago a photographer colleague, Mark, and I decided to get out of working at our homes, and share some cheap office space in Keighley.
Whilst we still had our own companies, we kept passing work to each other and decided we could be a good fit, to work in partnership.
We came up with Story, as we felt that our biggest strength in both our photography and filmmaking was being able to find a good story in whatever we did.
During my time teaching my editing module to the students at Bradford Uni I had come to the realisation that crafting a good story was an art form and wasn’t inherent in everyone. Some students had it and some didn’t. So I saw this as a USP for our company.
We have been operating for almost 3 years now and we have taken on 2 employees. One of them, was one of my students I taught at Bradford Uni.
We now specialise in making content for the education sector and we believe storytelling is the most effective way to get emotional investment from an audience.
|
Sectors worked in and routes taken: |
|
See above |
|