I'm Tim, and I'm the one who shows up.
I started Stump & Root in 2024 because the companies I admired around here were doing extraordinary work and had no way to show it.
I grew up around people who build things. In Lancaster County you are never more than a few miles from somebody welding, framing, pouring, or finishing something by hand, and most of them are quietly excellent at it. What almost none of them have is a way to make that excellence legible to somebody who has not stood in the shop.
That gap is the whole business. I am not here to make you look bigger than you are. I am here to make you look exactly as good as you already are, which for most of my clients is considerably better than their website suggests.
I bring in a crew when a job needs one, and I am on every single shoot. There is no account manager between you and the person making the thing, and there is no junior editor learning on your project.
I take on a small number of clients a year. That is not scarcity marketing, it is just the only way the work stays this good.
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
Where the name comes from
A stump is the part everybody writes off.
That verse is a promise that what looks finished is not, and that the new growth comes up out of the old wood rather than in spite of it. I did not pick it because it made a tidy logo. I picked it because it is true about God and it turned out to be true about the work.
Most of the companies I sit down with have been at it for twenty or thirty years. There is real craft in the shop and a real story in the family, and somewhere along the way they stopped believing anyone outside the building would care. That is a stump. My job is to find the shoot coming up out of it.
I liked that shoot carries both meanings, the one that grows and the one you do with a camera. That is not a coincidence I arranged. I just noticed it.
I am a Christian and I run this business like one. In practice that mostly looks unglamorous. I tell you the truth about your business even when a flattering version would close faster. I quote a fixed price and I hold it. I do not take a project I do not think I can do well. And I try to treat the people I film, the crew I hire, and the clients who pay me the way I would want to be treated, which is a low bar I miss often enough to keep me humble.
None of that is a requirement for working with me. I have made films for people who believe very differently than I do and it has never once been a problem. But you asked who you would be hiring, and this is who.
We talk. I ask about the business, the customer, and what actually closes deals for you. No pitch on this call.
I build the strategy, run the shoot, and handle the edit. You review in one place and I handle the rest.
You get the film, the photography, and the cutdowns, plus a library that keeps working for a year.
I make narrative films too.
A folk horror short currently on the festival circuit, and a supernatural grief drama in development. My wife co-writes with me.
It is not a side hobby that competes with client work. It is the reason the client work looks the way it does.
Stump & Root FilmsI run a monthly gathering.
Free, in Lancaster, for Christian filmmakers who want to get better at the craft and not do it alone.
Anyone making things is welcome, whether you shoot weddings, commercials, or nothing yet.
More about the guildTell me what you're building.
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A creative studio in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Brand films, photography, and design for family-owned manufacturers, outdoor structure companies, and trades businesses.
Narrative film work lives at Stump & Root Films.