The founders of Don't Watch That TV make videos on a tiny budget, but that doesn't mean they don't rack up huge viewing figures

Five years ago Just Jam began as a small club night at the Alibi in Dalston, London. Back then the founders, Tim & Barry, had very little in the way of equipment or funds. In fact their entire kit bag consisted of nothing more than an outdated £100 Sony video camera, mixing desk, a sound system designed for a boy racer and a hell of a lot of enthusiasm.

On week one pretty much no one turned up to their night, save crew and the upcoming grime artists they’d booked, like Oneman and Tempa T. But, slowly and surely, the night’s reputation for cutting-edge music and visuals grew, as did Alibi’s, which was literally being built at the time. (Check out early Just Jam videos and you’ll see the backdrop steadily take shape behind MCs spitting and DJ spinning).

“We started out 15 years ago as photographers known mainly for documenting the grime scene and doing fashion stuff for magazines like i-D,” says Tim. “Then in 2006 everything in the grime scene kind of changed because Youtube came about,” explains Barry. Before kids were filming freestyles and burning them onto DVDs. Then they began ripping that same content off disks and onto Youtube.

Instead of following the crowd, Tim & Barry decided to produce their own unique music channel for the platform packed with a mix of colourful low-fi, glitchy aesthetics, wavy basslines and ringtone sounds. “As far as I know, we’re one of the first people to make creative content for Youtube,” says Tim. The combination of eclectic music and balearic visuals proved irresistible and soon enough brands, like Nike and Adidas and Microsoft, were knocking on the duos door.

“We were getting 100,000 views overnight and that’s what really got out name out there,” says Tim. In terms or upcoming music talent and visuals no one was broadcasting anything close to what Just Jam had. Aaron Chan, a filmmaker from Vancouver, came on to art direct videos, and soon brought in upcoming visual artists who could manipulate effects live on screen, like Daniel Swan, Rachel Noble and Chris King. Some were already known for their work, others turned up to the nights and got involved.

The underlying ethos? “Just go and f**king do it,” says Tim. “If you wait until you’ve got a certain camera or you can afford to you’ll either never do it or someone else will have done it, or it wont be relevant any more. You’ve just got to go and do it, and that’s what we’ve always done.”

Back in the day Tim & Barry pitched a young Dizzee Rascal for a feature in an established magazine before he had a record contract. They said no. Two years later he was storming the charts after winning the Mercury Prize for his debut album Boy in da Corner. “We made a decision at that point that it would never happen again,” says Tim.

They went digital so that they wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of shooting on film anymore, and decided to just self-commission. It worked and in 2011 they got another chance to film Dizzee Rascal and D Double E for Bluku! Bluku!

“Self-commissioning has become a really important part of our work,” says Tim. It’s about getting work out before it’s not really finished but people can get the vibe and the idea. If you get it out, then you might get some money from somewhere to help it grow. If you don’t get it out, you’re not going to get that money, whatever it is.”

All we want to do is be creative, but we have to work!

To this day the Just Jam nights, now live streamed in a permanent studio space painted from floor to ceiling in a deep blue (for visual effects layering), are completely free. And, like in the early days of Just Jam, the crowd is mainly made up of artists and crew. In order to keep doing what they do best Tim & Barry juggle running Don’t Watch That TV, which includes 24 shows, from Chicken Shop Date to Writer’s Block, create music videos, shoot editorial, do workshops and create documentaries, like I’m Tryna Tell Ya – a film on the Chicago footwork scene featuring the legendary DJ Rashad. “It was a nightmare launching,” says Tim, who jokingly says he’s about to go on his first holiday in four years. “It’s still is a bit of a nightmare because to be honest all we want to do is be creative and do creative projects, but we have to work!” All the effort that’s gone into Just Jam has most definitely paid off. Today Tim & Barry can call some of the most innovative artists friends as well as collaborators – a fact that’s as much to do with their easy-going nature as their open and experimental approach. Four Tet, L-vis 1990 and Nguzunguzu all recently appeared on Just Jam, signaling a move away from just grime, and more towards cutting-edge underground. Just Jam’s recent club night at the Barbican, a brutalist concrete jungle usually reserved for art exhibitions and classical concerts, confirms this. Heavyweight acts like J.M.E played alongside Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip and upcoming acts like Drippin in an immersive and psychedelic playground, made up of a 20m ² screen flagged by two 10m ² HD displays, orchestrated by Aaron Chan and a roster or exciting video artists.

“It’s really not a grime show anymore,” says Tim, speaking about how their audience has gone global. “We still represent grime and we still love grime. But we’ve also hosted all the footwork guys a lot of Jersey club guys, people like Techy Latex. Plus we’ve just done a night with Future Brown, which is coming out soon, so it’s becoming a lot more mixed now.”

Tim & Barry are also keen to get out of the studio. This year they’re hosting a boat party at Outlook festival, celebrating their 15th night at Ace Hotel and even collaborating with the London Symphony Orchestra. Plus, they’re upping the ante with the technical side of Just Jam. Next time you watch Just Jam you’ll be able to see some groundbreaking effects, like motion exaggerated in three dimensions.

“It’s really nice,” says Tim, speaking about the software upgrade. “Especially when you point the cameras at the audience because you get that thing where everyone’s like ‘oh look that’s me’. Then when they realise that it’s moving they all go f**king nuts. With the creative side we’re always pushing it, and we’ve got a bunch of ideas and things that are going to be coming out in the next year.”

When Just Jam first kicked off it was just Tim & Barry. Today they have a crew of up to ten people live mixing footage from three cameras, handling social-media as the broadcast goes live and checking the sound. Gone, it seems, are the days when they create music videos, like Skepta’s award winning That’s Not Me, on a budget of £80.

The ambition is still the same though. Looking to the future Tim & Barry simply want to pump up the volume and get the crowd more and more involved. As you might expect, they’re doing it their own way, selecting talent they believe in, instead of crunching big audience analytics data, and building their own mish mash of software and hardware, instead of buying packages off the shelf.

“We’ve been doing it for fifteen years and we’re still plugging away really f**king hard and we’re fiercely independent,” says Tim. A certain amount of people love us for that fact, but it’s very difficult. We’re still struggling fifteen years on but we still love it enough to do it.”

Photography by Dexter Lander