The story about how I almost walked away from the industry before I really got started
Being a wedding filmmaker is not easy and truth be told it’s not for everyone. If you want to make it filming weddings, build a sustainable, profitable, life fulfilling business than the first pre-requisite is, “you have to LOVE it.” Strongly, deeply, whole-heartedly and more importantly know WHY you want to film weddings in the first place.
At first, I thought I knew why I wanted to do this. After my first wedding I felt this intense sense of belonging to something so much bigger than myself. For the first time in my life I felt like this is what I am meant to do with my life. Becoming a filmmaker and making beautiful films for beautiful people. It sounded amazing on paper and before I made it my career, it continued to be amazing.
Until one day in 2014…I was being Sued.
She ended up cancelling the suit after a month and I lost a piece of my heart and desire to film weddings because of this experience. I poured my entire soul into these films, went above and beyond, and yet it wasn’t good enough. I felt like a failure, and felt completely defeated as a young filmmaker.
So, I stopped filming weddings and went back on the path to discover my calling. I quit my Dad’s company in 2015 and stumbled into the land of corporate videography. 2 months in I realized I made another huge mistake. Corporate video and wedding filmmaking are polar opposites. The atmosphere, the structure, the mentality, the condescension. This life wasn’t for me.
God was calling me back to weddings. I just needed that distance to recalibrate and heal from that negative experience. One silver lining did come from it though, I needed to learn more about Business and I needed to learn it quick. Thankfully, working for my dad taught me a lot about client management, product development, and customer relations. My negative experience taught me the importance of Contracts and creating safeguards within my business.
So, I quit the corporate world, ran to the tax office and got an LLC. Signed up for a year on the wedding pages, built a rinky dink website through Squarespace, hired a Brand designer to help me get a more concise and professional look and went back into the land of wedding filmmaking.
The only problem was I had 8 weddings on the books, no system, no structure, and very little confidence.
That is when I did the best thing I could have done for myself, I invested in a mentorship program. I knew that if I wanted to succeed and never go back to the soul sucking corporate 9-to-5, I needed help from someone who has achieved exactly what I want to do for myself. So I learned as much as I could from other filmmakers who were crushing it and making films that I wanted to make for other people.
I learned how to price my worth, build a system, communicate with couples on the value of what I offer, the best gear to use, storytelling techniques to create powerful films, I learned the art of wedding filmmaking and how to build a business that I could be proud of.
That following year I booked more weddings than I ever thought possible and felt like I was on top of the world. Looking back, I romanticize those early beginnings at times because I want to forget what happened next…
The biggest mistakes I made happened because I didn’t have anyone to give me a warning sign. I had no sounding board, no wisdom, no perspective, all I had to go on was my own understanding. Sure there is merit to building a profitable business alone but If you don’t have anyone to share in that success, what did you really gain?
I reached the end of my first full time year and started feeling that sense of dread come over me again. That familiar feeling of uncertainty, doubt, fear, and insecurity of whether or not I could really do this, could I really make it? I experienced my first real taste of burnout and it was nasty. I woke up with panic attacks, severe anxiety, depression, and felt more alone in the world than ever before
I filmed 46 weddings in 2017, made over $120,000 in revenue, and was at my lowest of lows mentally and emotionally. I was so confused because here I am, LIVING THE DREAM and felt more disconnected than ever and I didn’t know why.
I had all the right “Hows,” but I lacked “Whos” I knew how to communicate, sell, film, edit, deliver, but I lacked relationships with like-minded filmmakers who were going through the same things.
If I was going to succeed in this industry, I couldn’t do it alone. I needed to get me some filmmaker friends
You can’t survive in this world by yourself, you may get far for a little while, and you may feel on top of the world for a fraction of a second but eventually all that time spent alone, editing other peoples life experiences, memories, love stories, spending your days, weeks, and months working, missing out on family events, friends birthdays, all of these things will eventually catch up to you.
We need People that know what its like to be a beginner, experienced with the uncomfortable, and understands we are better together.
I was going into my second year of filming weddings as a hobby. I was in college and working for my Dad during this time. I received an inquiry from one of my server friends from the restaurant I worked at, she told me they were gifting their friend a video and splitting the costs.
I charged $850 for full day wedding coverage, a 5 minute teaser, 15 minute full length wedding film, ceremony film, drone footage, second shooter, and raw footage. I paid my second $300, Spent $50 on gas, $25 on food, $200 on camera rentals and made a whopping $275. They didn’t offer a hotel and I wasn’t smart enough to request it so I drove 4 hours there, filmed for 12 hours, drove 4 hours back same day. The entire day turned into an 18 hour event.
The bride’s cousin was handling communications and wanted to be involved in the editing process since she worked for a wedding video company herself. I was naïve and agreed. NEVER. EVER. DO THIS. She hated everything I produced, wanted countless revisions, wouldn’t let the bride even see the film to get her thoughts. I spent 6+ months and 20 revisions later until I finally called it quits. I offered a compromise to send everything I had completed which was everything listed in our agreement as well as the project files for her to edit herself. She agreed.
3 months later, I receive a letter in the mail from an attorney, a slanderous letter from the business she worked for, and a packet of all of our communications. She was suing me for $850 because she felt I did not own up to the agreement.
