What in the blue blazes was I ever thinking.Glad I never made THAT mistake. My music videos START at $3,000 nowadays.
I did end up getting a commercial location though. Things have been going pretty well. Been self-employed for a couple years now.
Interested in moving my studio to a commercial location
- Thread starter Kamikaze Revy
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What in the blue blazes was I ever thinking.Glad I never made THAT mistake. My music videos START at $3,000 nowadays.
I did end up getting a commercial location though. Things have been going pretty well. Been self-employed for a couple years now.
True Blue Moon
Superstar
Glad I never made THAT mistake. My music videos START at $3,000 nowadays.
I did end up getting a commercial location though. Things have been going pretty well. Been self-employed for a couple years now.
And big congrats breh. Where are you located and what kind of clientele do you mostly serve? I’d love to get a breakdown or overview for how the journey went from these posts to now whenever you have time.
I live in Virginia Beach.
And big congrats breh. Where are you located and what kind of clientele do you mostly serve? I’d love to get a breakdown or overview for how the journey went from these posts to now whenever you have time.
To make a long story less long...
I started around 16 years old dabbling in music. Writing, recording, producing.
Bought a cheap desktop pc at a pawn shop, an interface, and a keyboard.
As I kept working at it, I my skillset outgrew my gear and I had to upgrade.
Eventually got the point of wanting to start shooting music videos so I bought a canon SL1.
Shot a few videos for free and learned quickly that local artists (and a lot of small businesses) expect/demand you work for "exposure".
A company I was working 9 - 5 for had a bunch of supervisors complaining about a lack of training.
I asked for a meeting with the HR manager and pitched the idea of letting me shoot a training video with my camera. They agreed.
I took that training video and showed it to a few local barber shops and basically said "Look, I have a camera, and can shoot videos. Can I shoot a promo video for you for free?" Shot a few barbershop videos and took those over to a couple restaurants. Ended up at a local Buffalo Wild Wings a friend used to work at and she let me shoot a promo video there. Took that video, showed it to a couple realtors and for the first time started charging for videos.
Did a TON of real estate walkthrough videos, upgraded the camera to a Panasonic GH5 and rocked with that for about 3 years.
In that time, a friend of a friend of a friend worked for a company that does government contracting.
That company bid on, and won, a contract to do 9 training videos for the Navy. That company DOES NOT do videos so, through those connections, they eventually got in touch with us on some "Hey, we won this contract that we don't really even care about since we don't even do videos. How about you guys subcontract for us and do the videos?" We jumped at the opportunity and before we knew it we got flown to San Diego California to film 9 training videos. We closed our eyes and threw what we thought was a hail mary. Told them we'd do each video for $10,000 ($90,000 total). They agreed. We later found out that they charge the Navy a little over $250,000 for the videos we shot. Not mad at that at all, but it really changed my mindset on everything and put a serious battery in my back.
That contract ended, and we hit the ground running. Got a commercial office space, and shifted the entire business to video production with some audio recording on the side. A TON of stuff happened over the course of 4 years. Ups and downs. Droughts and some crazy contracts and fun projects.
Fast forward through a lot to get to today, I shifted the business strategy from video production to "Full Service Marketing Support".
We now have more business than ever. I've been paid to speak at different events about marketing. Still do a ton of videos. Do websites, photography, social media management, logo design. I brought on a couple guys that help me with the work as 1099 contractors and I hope to have at least 2 people on an official part time basis next year.
That's some of the main points of the journey so far but I'm happy to go into further details.
