I’m Jarrod Sumpter. I own and operate Just Basl Productions out of Arvada, just west of Denver. On most of the work you’ll see on this site, I’m the one behind the camera — and on a lot of it, I’m also the one who cut it, graded it and delivered it.
That’s deliberate, and it’s the whole argument for hiring a small shop. When the person who lit a scene is the same person grading it three weeks later, nothing gets lost in the handoff. There’s no meeting to explain what the intent was. The intent never left the room.
What I actually do
Three things, and they overlap more than the categories suggest.
Commercials and brand films
The pieces a company builds a campaign around. Usually a concept, a crew, a shoot and a finish — and often a concept I brought rather than one I was handed. The best version of this job starts before anyone has decided what the video is.
Asset library programs
An ongoing relationship rather than a one-off. We shoot in blocks and build a bank of material a marketing team can deploy across a year instead of scrambling for a new production every quarter. It’s cheaper per asset and it looks like one brand instead of six vendors.
Gear and crew
Sometimes you don’t need a production company — you need a gaffer who thinks like a DP, or a lighting package that arrives on carts instead of in a pile. That’s a real part of the business, and it has its own page.
Fifteen years in, the thing I’m still most useful for isn’t operating a camera. It’s finding the story in a situation that doesn’t obviously have one.
How I work
I’d rather bring an idea than take an order. When Galvanize asked for one explainer video, the counter-pitch was that the same shoot could produce three pieces. It did. When Katie at KSP Productions came to us for a Neat Method commercial, the brief was to build a crew and invent a concept — not execute a shot list.
I plan hard so the day can go sideways. Six locations in a single out-of-state day only works because everything was locked before wheels-up. Eighty-five deliverables across twelve towns in sixty-nine days only works because the package was built to move rather than the schedule built to hold.
I own the gear, and that changes the math. Lighting and grip come out of one package instead of three rental houses. It means fewer moving parts, fewer invoices, and a crew that already knows where everything is.
The bench
“Operator” is singular, but almost nothing good gets made alone. These are the people I call, and you’ll see them credited by name across the case studies — because they earned it.
Fixafire Studios
Buttaboy
KSP Productions
Who I’ve worked with
Brands and organizations that have trusted the work: the NCAA, Silvernest, Galvanize, Neat Method, the University of Colorado, CollegeInvest, Camp Bow Wow, Presidio, the Front Range Passenger Rail District, and F&W Media.
The work itself is on the Work page, and five projects are pulled apart scene by scene in the case studies — how each one came in, what we planned, what happened on the day, and what it turned into.
The kit
Sony BURANO and FX3 bodies, DZO Arles glass, a deep Aputure lighting package led by the 1200X, Easyrig and slider support, and a production van with roll-on carts. The full inventory lives on The Tools, and most of it is available to rent through ShareGrid.
None of which matters much on its own. The camera is the least interesting decision on any shoot. But when the light is right and the person in front of it forgets you’re there, the gear needs to disappear rather than get in the way — and that takes knowing it well enough not to think about it.