Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Pinkston.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I began my career in television by producing commercials about 16 years ago. That eventually led me into opening my own advertising agency. Through this agency, I did several television show projects over the years and was very successful as a marking advertising agency. Then in 2018, I had the opportunity to personally produce a television show pilot for PBS St. Louis. The pilot was for a cooking show concept that I had been developing with a Danish Master Chef friend of mine named Lasse Sorensen. The concept of the show was that, as the host of the show, Chef Lasse would visit the kitchens of St Louis restaurants and get to know more about the people behind the food. The pilot named “Food is Love” was immediately picked up by PBS. We are in our second season of production and the show has become a favorite in the food world. Four episodes of the show were nominated for an EMMY this past year. The show continues to spread a positive message about people from different cultures that make up the St Louis food scene.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Before the television show was picked up, we spent almost a year developing a pilot. When the show was given the green light by PBS, I was at a fork in the road and had to make a decision to either continue growing my marketing agency which was 12 years old at that point or to walk away from what I had built, to pursue this new opportunity. It was a tough decision with no guarantee if I chose the television show, but never the less I decided to jump off the edge and change the course of what I was doing. The pandemic hit as we were filing the 3rd episode and this made the road forward very rocky. As restaurants closed and people began to quarantine, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull off filling the order for 13 episodes of a tv show about restaurants when all of the restaurants were closing. Things were very uncertain and we were constantly having to pivot and formulate new plans but, in the end, we pulled off a very successful and well received first season of the show.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In the filmmaking world, I have worn and still wear a lot of hats. The process of writing a television script and then bringing it to life is something that I personally never get tired of doing. Writing, directing, shooting and editing and the skills that every filmmaker needs to be effective in telling a compelling story and so these are the pillars that make up the bulk of that I do on a day-to-day basis.
I approach the process of making a television show first as a writer but bring the story to life through cinematography and editing. I am most proud of how the stories that we tell in each episode end up impacting the people who we feature. There is nothing more satisfying to me that to hear a restaurant owner who was featured on our show, say that they have seen a business increase since they were featured. To me, that means people are watching. Packing a lot into an episode can create more work for me but I have come to find that over-shooting gives me plenty of options for where to take a story and gives me room to make the story/episode complex and continually interesting to the viewer.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
As a filmmaker, I never personally had a mentor to be an example or guide for me in real life, so instead, I studied the work of the best producers in the filmmaking industry. The ones whose work I admired. I read everything I could about their process and I looked at how they approached the story, how they keep the audience engaged and visually I poured over the cinematography of the giants like Tarantino and Scorsese. Whether it’s in real life or by studying the works of others in your field, the best way to get the most from a mentor experience is to be willing to observe with an open mind. You have to be willing to abandon the idea that you already know what you are doing. You have to be a student in order to learn. There is no room for ego.
Contact Info:
- Email: jason@darkhorsecinematics.com
- Website: foodislove.tv
- Instagram: @jasonpinks10
- Youtube: YouTube.com/foodislovetv
Image Credits
Erin Pinkston
