Meet the Woodlesford couple behind a Leeds film studio producing documentaries on creative individuals

James and Vicky Wall, both 36, make up the team behind Creative Stories. The company, which is still in its relative infancy, has been shining a light on creative individuals in Yorkshire with documentaries. Vicky is a mental health practitioner within the NHS and utilises her communication skills in interviewing, meanwhile James has a background in filmmaking.

Vicky explained: “It works really well, I think. My background is that I work for the NHS and work with children and young people as a mental health practitioner. I've used this set of skills when we're interviewing. James has taught me about filming so I get really excited when I see some of my shots in the film, because that's obviously not my background. We really love it, it just works and we've learnt a lot from each other.”

One of the Creative Stories documentaries tells the story of Siobhan Murphy, star of the BBC’s Interior Design Masters. In the documentary, Siobhan gives the camera a tour of her 1930s Art Deco home and discusses her journey.

James said: “Vicky naturally chats to people, they feel really comfortable talking to her, whether we're at a wedding or sitting round a table or with friends, people like to chat to her. She's a very creative person but doesn't really have an outlet like I do professionally. We thought we'd do one and see what it was like. I do the technical side of it and Vicky sits in the hot seat.

"We both ask questions but my brain works more of a story. While we're asking questions, I'm thinking about how we can make this a full story that follows an arc. Vicky knows when they are ready to open up about something. She just seems to know when to ask the next questions, she's got the intuition.”

The documentaries were initially being released under James’ name, but he admits this felt unfair considering the extent of Vicky’s contributions. The couple began brainstorming names and soon enough, Creative Stories was born.

James said: “It was all under my name because I had a bit of an audience online with some subscribers on YouTube. We were making them under by name but it didn't really feel fair because it wasn't really me, it was the pair of us making them in equal parts. We started to brainstorm names that we quite liked and eventually we came to Creative Stories. As an actual company, Creative Stories has been going for about six months at the most but we've been making these documentaries for about three years now.”

Despite the sleek and professional nature of the company’s content, it is actually produced in the loft of the couple’s home in Woodlesford. However, they harbour ambitions of making feature-length documentaries and would love their own studio.

James said: “Currently, we're working from home. We have a loft space which is like our creative hub and we just do it from there really. We'd love to have our own studio, that would be the absolute dream. We get extremely jealous when we visit these creatives. We just think 'one day'.

“We've got a lot of people lined up to interview next year. We want to continue bringing a voice to local creators but we're open to going a bit outside of Yorkshire as well. We really like meeting people. We've had such great feedback from the creatives we've interviewed so far. We want to keep doing this, making more documentaries. We are thinking of bringing in hired work and we'd really like to make a feature-length documentary. That's the overall aim.”

The documentaries produced by Creative Stories can be viewed on the company’s official YouTube channel.