A Year and a Half In

Two and a half years ago, Zenen and I were doing corporate event work for nonprofits, mostly separately, mostly whenever our paths crossed. I was in Los Angeles with three decent irons in the fire. Camera work for ESPN, DP'ing documentaries, shooting Hollywood press junkets. He was flying out to LA for his own music video work. Everything either of us had ever made, we'd made alone. Solo credits, solo reels, no shared name on anything.

We used to talk about the idea of starting something together, back when it was just a thing you say. Then I moved home to Ohio, and it stopped being a thing you say.

When we combined our two portfolios under one name and called it a company, we had zero clients. Not a slow start. Not a few leads to chase. Zero.

Two people who'd been doing real work in bigger markets, choosing to start completely over, in a state we both thought was a few steps behind the places we'd been working. No safety net. Just a bet that we could do better work here than what was already being made here.

Everybody tells you to niche down. Pick a lane, own it, become the guy who does the one thing. And we understood why that advice exists. It's easier to sell, easier to explain, easier to get found. We didn't do it, and the reason wasn't strategy. It was survival.

I left a real career to do this, and Zenen was building his own thing, and neither of us signed up to turn into a machine that makes one kind of video over and over. We wanted to keep stretching. Different lighting, different edits, different concepts. Music videos one week, something corporate the next. Not because it was smart, but because it's the only way either of us stays interested enough to be good.

Range on purpose

So we said yes to range on purpose. And a year and a half in, the range is the thing I'm proudest of.

We've made work for small local fashion brands. For musicians with big followings and for musicians with none. For a major health college system. For medtech software. For a sauna company and a sports drink. Brand, creative, corporate. We said from day one we'd never box ourselves into one of those, and looking at the actual list of what we've shot, we didn't. Each of those jobs asked for something different, and that's exactly what we wanted.

The range feeds itself

The other thing that's true, and I'll just say it plainly. It worked. We're making more doing this than either of us made before. Not despite refusing to specialize. Because of it. The range is what makes clients trust us with the thing they can't quite describe. The music video sharpened the brand work. The corporate work funded the swings. It all feeds itself.

A year and a half ago we combined two solo reels, had no clients, and bet that we could refuse to pick a lane and still make it. We set out to prove that to ourselves, and we have. Now we keep building.