Daily Inspiration: Meet Jason Baker

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Baker.

Hi Jason, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
While attending Bowling Green State University from 2008 to 2012 as a Telecommunications major with a focus in television production, I was also heavily involved with Film/Theater and Music courses. The combination of these three separate fields introduced me to all of the building blocks of storytelling in nearly every capacity that still resonates with me to this day. From being able to understand the importance of story beats, musical motifs, lighting, cinematography and overall direction and film theory, I think I unintentionally lucked out by spreading myself so thin during college. Fortunately, that effort was able to give me the confidence to pursue video production for a living and never look back.
During my junior and senior years at BGSU, I created an independent study course for myself to make a documentary. During the summer before my senior year, I hopped on a Greyhound Bus and traveled to New York City with the cheapest Nikon DSLR camera I could find, a $20 microphone, a 20 year old tripod my dad found at a garage sale and a duffle bag with 2 garage work lights. With the help of my advisor, she provided a list of Telecommunication alumni that were living and working in New York City. I wanted to hear their stories of how BGSU helped them make it to the Big Apple and show off all of the career possibilities to new and incoming TCOM majors. I successfully interviewed seven alumni that were working at Sirius XM, MTV, Bravado International, Democracy Now, Harris Interactive and Smash Studios. Little did I know, I was building a network of colleagues and also creating my first promotional video, rather than a ‘documentary’. After returning and 2 months of teaching myself how to edit using the brand new Final Cut X suite, luckily the University liked my video and asked me to do another video, but this time, featuring alumni living and working in Ohio. This was the production that altered my career in a very unexpected way. Up until that point, I thought I would have to live in New York or Los Angeles if I wanted to work in TV or film. But after traveling to every corner of Ohio and interviewing 12 alumni with a wide variety of career paths, they showed me that I could work in the industry that I love and still stay close to family and friends. One of these Ohio alumni, who actually graduated 10 years before me, would go on to be my closest colleague and even the Best Man in my wedding!
While doing these independent productions, I got a job working at WBGU-TV, the local PBS station directly across the street from campus. To my surprise, my manager threw me in the deep end and sent me out into the field to crew their brand new flagship series ‘Scenic Stops’. Once again, I found myself traveling all over Northwest Ohio capturing fascinating stories, history and even new career paths that I didn’t know existed. And that’s where it all clicked in my brain. There were suddenly so many businesses to promote, so many organizations to advocate, so many jobs to recruit! I could be the one to get those stories out there, but I knew I would still need more practice and experience. After graduation, I worked for a small production company for a year and half, worked on some incredible projects and continued to grow my network. Without even realizing it, I started my own production company, Lock One Productions.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of my major career challenges and accomplishments was working with a group of professors from Bluffton University to help create the feature documentary, Activismo: Art & Dissidence in Cuba. In 2015, when there were only rumors that the border was going to open up to the United States for the first time since 1962, we received a scholarly research permit to travel to Cuba to meet and film dissonant artists that were being persecuted by their government for simply wanting freedom of expression and have a voice. It was a long seven day production of having to play a game of ‘telephone’ with our contacts. We were told to meet in one area for an interview production, only to be met by one person telling us the secret location, but sometimes they continued to shuffle us because of the constant surveillance that was placed on some of our interviewees. We were constantly on edge and never knew what would be waiting for us. I was only 25 at the time with little knowledge of what true Communism looked like, but by the time we finished interviewing our artists and hearing what they were fighting for, the picture was clear and I knew that the stories we captured needed to be heard. From 2016 to 2020, I edited this movie during the death of Fidel Castro, stricter policy change, our artists being arrested and even disappearing. The film would go on and win multiple awards during an International film festival circuit and is currently seeking a distributor.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I started my full-service video production company, Lock One Productions, in 2015 and have completed over 2,500 deliverables for clients across the country. At this point, I think I am known for my documentary-style storytelling. Whether the client is a manufacturing warehouse, a nonprofit organization, textile industry or hospital, my videos always have a strong overarching voice; and that doesn’t always mean a literal human voice. I just want the audience to feel connected to what they are seeing and hearing and have some kind of response. To me, that’s what it’s all about. In college I called this response, “Breaking the Fifth Wall”. We all know what breaking the fourth wall is; when the character acknowledges the audience. The fifth wall in my theory is the reverse side of that wall; when the audience feels compelled to react to what they are watching, whether that means laughing out loud, crying, trembling, or they jump so hard their popcorn goes flying. That is what every filmmaker should be striving towards. So every short film festival competition I’ve submitted to since college, I enter as ‘Fifth Wall Productions’. In my 16 years of making short films, I’ve touched almost every genre, most recently completing my first ever Sci-Fi short film, Signal: Node for the 3 Weeks of Wonder Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I honestly didn’t think I would last this long getting to do what I love everyday. I still have the passion to stay on top of the newest gear, algorithms, marketing strategies and to this day I still look forward to hearing about the next big shift in the world of video. I’m here for whatever the world can throw at me. I love a good challenge or puzzle.

Contact Info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-baker-dop/