Ep. 002 - Our Wedding Videography Journey

Danny & Jason take you on a journey through their personal paths into the wedding videography industry. From chance encounters to deliberate decisions, they share the twists and turns that led them to pursue this passion. Gain valuable insights as they recount the pivotal moments and experiences that shaped their careers, and discover the strategies they employed to build thriving businesses in today's competitive landscape. Whether you're just starting out or looking to elevate your existing venture, their stories offer inspiration and actionable advice to help you carve your own path in the world of wedding videography.

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https://www.instagram.com/thatweddingvideographerpodcast

Danny Rizzo
https://www.instagram.com/rizzo.films

Jase Hunter
https://www.instagram.com/afterglowweddings

Transcript

Danny (00:00):

Welcome to that Wedding Videographer podcast. I'm Danny.

Jason (00:03):

I'm Jace. Welcome at last, we have been speaking about this podcast for a very long time, interrupting your social feeds with a bunch of little teasers and stuff, pretending like we all had it figured out when actually we are.

Danny (00:15):

Yeah, we didn't really have it figured out at that point.

Jason (00:18):

We're busy. We're busy people, we've got busy lives, and running a podcast is clearly something new to us.

Danny (00:25):

Yes. Yeah, I mean, I've not done it before. Have you done it before? Wow. I

Jason (00:29):

Mean,

Danny (00:29):

Not podcasts. I mean, we've done enough podcasts to each other in the car. Normally when I've got a three hour drive to act the gear and we do mini podcasts of talking about what we're actually going to do with the

Jason (00:41):

Danny will leave at 20 to seven in the morning. I'll get a phone call and like an idiot. I actually accept that call knowing what's about to happen. Why you call me at this time, Danny? Oh yeah. You're just on my three hour drive track of Geen and I'm just too polite to go. Leave me alone, Danny. It's Saturday morning and I'm off. I don't need to be talking to you. We just want to say thank you for following the page and for hyping us up and if you've shared us, thank you very much for that too. We'll be expecting much more of you in the future

Danny (01:13):

Because we can't do this out yet

Jason (01:14):

And we're really looking forward to it.

Danny (01:17):

We are. It's been a long time in the making and yeah, while we were talking about there, we have had many podcasts in the car at 7:00 AM Thank you very much, Jason, for keeping me going in the car and making sure that I don't crash. But yeah, it's been a long time in the making. We're really, really excited about the future of the podcast and just getting started and building a bit of a community, what this podcast is all about.

Jason (01:44):

The community to us is super important. I think starting a podcast like this where we can just all relate to the problems and the successes that we have running a wedding videography company. It's content that I know that I want to hear. I know it's content that you probably want to hear.

Danny (02:00):

Sure.

Jason (02:01):

So that's why we're here. But we're going to elaborate a bit on that in this episode and tell you what's coming up in the future of this podcast. But for this week, we thought we'd dive into a little bit about ourselves because we're vain and we just want to talk about ourselves as much. That's why, I mean why else we just start our podcast. So we're just going to take this opportunity, what we've got you to tell you all about ourselves. Cool. Who will go first? I mean, you're way more vain than I'm, you listen to just call me at seven in the morning, so I have to listen to your voice for three hours. You're great at talking talk.

Danny (02:35):

Okay,

Jason (02:36):

Fine. Do you want me to go first?

Danny (02:36):

Jesus Christ. Cause out in the first episode, this is going to be funny. What do you think? Well, I mean, I dunno. You mean you've got your face over your Instagram way more than I do.

Jason (02:48):

It's true. I do love myself. So we thought we'd start this episode by telling you a little bit about who you're listening to, Danny and I, and the stories that have led us to this point and where we are in our careers because I think we both had very different paths to get to this point today everyone gets into videography in different ways and before you were a wedding videographer, you had a completely different background. So tell us a little bit about what you did before your wedding videographer.

Danny (03:21):

So prior to being a wedding filmmaker, I had been in the corporate world for about 15 years. So that was a variety of roles. It was mainly like sales, sales management, ops, management, bit of marketing in there and stuff like that as well.

Jason (03:38):

Heavily working with people all the

Danny (03:40):

Time. Yeah, surely because I think especially when you're a manager of people, you need to be able to, because dealing with don't particularly miss being a manager to be honest, because it's, it's not the easiest of jobs, not obviously just dealing with your own stuff. You're having to take on everybody else's mental load and their issues and stuff like that as well. So it's

Jason (03:59):

Not always good news.

Danny (04:00):

No, it's not. But that you learn a lot from those experiences and how to manage people and how to get the best out of people and stuff like that as well. So I don't, over those 15 years I've learned so much that I've been able to bring into the video space. The sales aspect and stuff of that as well has been massive of just because I think that's another thing people do not enjoy being sold to and they can smell when they're being sold to and it's really off Putin. And I think the key is to sell without it coming across as salesy, which I think a lot of people, as soon as they hear sales, they're like, oh, I just need to go. It's like the A, b, C of selling always be closing. And it's not really about that. It's just a lot of it is just listening, asking the right questions, listening to what the people are saying and then confirming that you are the right person for them based on what they're asking. And if they're not also telling them.

Jason (04:59):

And on that, please subscribe to our podcast if you haven't done so already. There's guaranteed straight in there always be causing Jason always be you subscribed to it too much. And so it's not an easy transition to go from manager sales into video. They don't necessarily link up. So how on earth did you get into the wedding

Danny (05:18):

Industry? So funny thing was actually, so this is way back just, it's roundabout like covid time and I think we had a really, really bad winter. And at the time I had been dabbling. I had a drone for years and I put the drone up and got some really, really nice shots of the tournament with the snow and my little Instagram, which was called the Glasgow Snapper at the time, cringe so bad, look Glasgow Snapper terrible. And it got picked up by a local news channel. And it's quite funny because at the time, actually it was during Covid because I remember I had a horrendous haircut at the time. Sorry Kirsty, but it was not good. But I got interviewed on this local news channel that you couldn't even watch on Sky. You had to have a free view box to even get the channel. So I couldn't even watch it. I had to watch it, the person had to send me, it was so bad. But after that, because I posted it in the local Glasgow pages and my Instagram blew up, I think I got about six or 700 followers within the space of a few days, which obviously even now would be huge.

(06:32):

And one of the guys that I used to work with at the time at British Gas years ago had started a property development company. He was asking, do you do normal camera work as well? And I was like, yeah, but I mean I can do, started doing a little bit for him and other people and it was like residential can walkthrough kind of deal. And it was just wasn't particularly for me. I didn't have the zest for it like I do for wedding filmmaking. Now, obviously didn't know about wedding filmmaking at the time, but I started experimenting. I'd done a couple of engagement style shoots with friends who Ashley and Liam, thank you very much for doing that. But that then got picked. One of the local videographers, David from Arrow Productions kind of messaged me. He was like, you need to come out and do weddings. I was like, I don't really want to do weddings at the time. I was like, don't really think that's for me. Oh, how wrong I was. So I went out second shot for him and then loved it and done a couple more. And then yeah, it started from there. And here we are circa what, four years later and living every minute of it.

Jason (07:44):

And what's different about you then to your as a now?

Danny (07:48):

Yeah, well I think the journey that you come on in a short space time, I think because the thing, you learn something new at every single wedding that you do. Still to this day you're always learning something new be that you do something a little bit differently, like a shot differently or as lighting or something or something happens and you'll go, right, crap, that can't happen again. So I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen. So I think all the mistakes that you make in that journey, which to be fair, I've never had anything that's went terribly, terribly wrong. I've always been extra cautious about certain things like backing up a footage and stuff like that. I've always made sure that there's multiple backups. I had multiple cloud backups at one point, which is just not necessary. But all the mistakes I think that you make over that course of the period just helped shape who you are. And there's so much growth even in the space of a year, there's so much growth and when you compound that over four years, it's huge.

Jason (08:53):

Yeah, it's actually crazy what can happen in a year. It's funny story, and this is completely, this isn't really off topic, but in January I wrote a little journal about how I was feeling in business at that point because Oh did you? Yeah. Just to say what's happening right now. So how many bookings I had, what I had this thing come, what I had next year. And I read it this morning and I was like, what difference four months

Danny (09:15):

Is

Jason (09:15):

Compared to that? So it was the 6th of January what I was, and like my God, I could not have predicted the next four months, but that was the changes I made then. So you're saying obviously over a year it's amazing what can happen in even half a year. It's a crazy business.

Danny (09:30):

It it's,

Jason (09:33):

Well thank you Danny for speaking at this.

Danny (09:37):

So let's move on to Jason Hunter, qui. So I guess a little bit of background about you. So pre weddings, what was Jason Hunter's life

Jason (09:48):

Video's kind of always been there, thereabouts. I mean even back to this a jackass, we're going back then. Wait, you were on jackass, right? Yeah. My name is Jason Hunter and this is the back flip off the slide. That was me. This was me throwing darts into my wall, making my mom region was in jackass. I was the guy at the camera and I went out, said, Hey, let's do some stunts. There's an air event over there, put that in my head. Stuff like that. So yeah, I was really into it and I made little highlight films for me. My mates just like arsal about and I was like, I have no idea what I want to do for a living. But I knew I wasn't very good at school, so I had to get out of that. And we had an open day at school, college was there and the film TV and radio was a new course at launching in Aberdeen, so that was a good excuse to run away

Danny (10:36):

From. So what age are you here?

Jason (10:36):

16. 16, wow. Yeah, so 16 in lead school and go to the college and I'm finally enjoying learning something because they're giving us cameras. We're going out, we're doing some filming and it was a really good experience to do that. But I did a couple jobs up in Aberdeen, but I was just a young idiot that wasn't really ready for responsibility and the opportunities didn't work out. I messed them up pretty much a couple lions when I shouldn't have been lying in and stuff. A couple store hangovers the next day. Yeah, happens. It happens when younger and I regret it at the time, but you move on. So I basically dabbled in retail for so long, but when I moved to Glasgow, my mate who went to college with was already in a wedding production

Danny (11:19):

Company

Jason (11:20):

And so he got me a couple of second shooter gigs. That was back 2009. 2009. So a couple of seconds your gigs. I didn't really know what I was doing at all. I just was given a camera. I was told to just keep this camera. Still messed that up a couple times. Yeah, I'm zooming in. But they were really good. They had the patience with me to teach me what they expected from a second share. And then I did that for them a few times a year throughout the years, maybe 10 years. And I never really thought about starting my own

Danny (11:52):

Goal,

Jason (11:53):

Not necessarily because I didn't want to. I think there was a lot of self-doubt in terms of the responsibility of going up and being the lead shooter. I just thought very highly of the people who were teaching me and that what they knew was so much more than what I could possibly do. So I was just focused on my job and I got a corporate job that was really lucky to get and I was really doing well at that and I was a photographer for them, so I had a camera in my hand. That's kind of

(12:17):

Where I'm at. But I was always really into the YouTube game and what some sort of film and I think after a while I just got fed up with the dream of the corporate life because I would only go as far as where I was. There was no way up for me unless I was willing to move and established in Glasgow here. So I wanted a way that I could work really hard at something and grow at the pace that I wanted to. And the only thing that I knew that wasn't the job I was doing was weddings. I'd done a bunch of them. So I thought, right, I, I'll start a Facebook page or get a website and we'll just go at it. We'll just give it a go. So

Danny (12:55):

Was that the catalyst then for you? Were just the corporate world, the dream is over. It's not exciting.

Jason (13:02):

Yeah,

Danny (13:02):

Because a passionate guy and not to knock obviously the corporate world, there's a lot of folk that do really well in it. I think for me certainly it was just I got tired of the rap race.

Jason (13:13):

I was working quite late and doing kind of shit for a long time and it wasn't necessarily getting rewarded. And maybe that's me being entitled and thinking expecting to me more. But a company like that, location wise, they're an international company. They had no use for me providing more for the company when I was, if I was willing to move to London or if I was willing to go abroad, which was when I was younger. But I was ready before they were ready

Danny (13:39):

Essentially.

Jason (13:41):

And so I'd realised, no, I want to stay in Glasgow. I can't really go any higher with this company. I want something to chase for. I really want to build something. I was always listening to podcasts about business and things and oh, that really excites me. I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to figure it out. And so I just did it out of basically I created the business as an escape of the corporate world. I wanted, wanted to grow the business so that it would be something that I could leave when I'm ready to leave.

Danny (14:11):

And what year is this?

Jason (14:11):

That was 2018 that I started at the end of that. And I had done a wedding for a friend basically I had done second June. A friend of mine asked me to do their wedding and I used that as an advertisement that I blasted 500 quid on Facebook too. And from that I did get a gig two weeks later that was for 150 pound in back garden and it was horrific. It was raining. We were in this little tent in the back garden. It wasn't watertight. I got leaked on and I think I did a good job, but back I've seen that film. You did do a good job considering that was my first ever film. And yeah, basically I thought it was all right, but that was a completely different style to where I'm at now. I think

(14:56):

I dabbled a bit for the first years before Covid in a style that was kind of similar to what the market expected. It was the traditional style. I thought that's what you had to do. And I booked so many weddings for 2020. I was in over 60 weddings for 2020. I was so cheap and I was just addicted to the booking cycle. So I was ready. Corporate world is gone by 2020 and then of course we know what happens. So the corporate world, the corporate world's back on, I'm back in business, COVID happens six day out, the 65 cancel Jesus Christ. And I'm like, right, I'm not quitting this job anytime soon.

(15:35):

But the break was good for me to kind of explore the world. I think my inspiration had come from Glasgow. I just looked at what people were in Glasgow were doing, I think, okay, these are the people I aspire to be like and the styles that I like. And then I really got into some international podcasts focused on American and Australian videographers and I was like, wow, this is so different and so fun. Wedding videos don't have to be like m seeing. So I discovered new videographers and I thought, right, going forward, the weddings that I've got booed going forward, I'm going to approach them like this.

Danny (16:12):

Shout out to

Jason (16:13):

Bottle brush films who were the main inspiration.

Danny (16:17):

But you can see the bottle brush in after

Jason (16:20):

In a way that I don't think is a carbon copy, but

Danny (16:22):

No, no, no, no. But you can see the influence.

Jason (16:24):

It was a massive influence. They were a massive influence to me and to many others. You see what impact they've had in the industry because they maybe were,

Danny (16:31):

Well, they challenge the norm, don't they?

Jason (16:32):

Yeah, I dunno if they were the first, I'm sure they had inspiration from someone, but for me those films were the most entertaining

Danny (16:39):

Thing

Jason (16:40):

For me. And I knew that there was a different way to go about wedding film. It took me a while to figure out how to do that and I've kind of found my own way with it a little bit. But from 2021 onwards, that's the direction I've gone. It's been essentially, it's become my whole personality since I've been saying this to people. I don't have my own personal Instagram or anything. I basically

Danny (17:03):

Exist today.

Jason (17:04):

Yeah, yeah. I need you'd pick up on that because you go, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm being personal. I'm being personal. And I'm, see I basically just tested guy out. I Don Matter are pushing it. So I'm like, yeah, I'm going to speak to my people. I'm not going to do that

Danny (17:16):

Anymore. I think I put on it, I think the first thing I put on was I'm really excited about this and I think I've done two threads since and not really touch. I just do know what, I can't be bothered with it. I've got an Instagram and that's the whack, I don't deal with Facebook anymore.

Jason (17:31):

I'm trying to use it to speak to other suppliers in a way of like, yeah, this vent here, but even though it public, but we will dive into threads

Danny (17:40):

Because

Jason (17:40):

Meta are pushing it and it's amazing how you can see notifications of threads all the time. But yeah, so since 2021, I've gone down this different path, got all the branding stuff and I think it's just been a really fun journey to get to where I am now because I've really honed in on what I like and it's a completely different place from when I started. And I think what slowed me down initially having second shot weddings for 10 years was just self-confidence. I didn't believe I was good enough until I dove in. And then even some days I'm still like, am I? But I know I am. I know I'm good enough to do the job I want to do. I think it's,

Danny (18:25):

It's funny that though, to sort a button, but it's funny that because obviously you are on socials and stuff like that and just general day to day, you're a confident guide really. But I think it is also a testament to the, pretty much everybody gets that kind of, it's like imposter syndrome, isn't it?

Jason (18:38):

Everyone suffers from imposter

Danny (18:39):

Syndrome with it.

Jason (18:40):

Yeah, it, it's something that we all get. I mean, we're going to hosting a podcast right now and a lot of people wouldn't want to start a podcast, but a lot of people won't because they think who would want to listen to me? What I like about our conversations is the fact that we all have an interest in our business and we all have an interest in wanting to grow and be better. And no one has all the answers.

Danny (19:02):

No

Jason (19:02):

One person has all the answers. And that's why it's great listening to other people who are in the same journey as you talk about their experiences,

Danny (19:09):

Especially those that are in the trenches with them,

Jason (19:12):

Those who want to be aiming for 10, 20, 30 weddings a year as their full-time job. There's a lot that can go wrong in that. There's a lot and there's a lot that can go right with that. And learning from the experiences of what people have done I think is so valuable. There's so many things that I wish I knew four years ago that I know now that would've been so helpful for me.

Danny (19:38):

Oh, totally. But think about it, that's what every single mistake is though. The mistakes are more important than the wins. Because if I think about, so this is pre even me thinking about videography. So our wedding videographer, there was an issue basically with the microphones. It was either a case of that they didn't record Kirsty's dad in my best man's speech or something happened, the microphones. But anyway, there was no backup. So to the point where he tried to put subtitles on for the father of the bride and Best Man speech, because I think it was using the shotgun making and it's not great. Mines was fine thankfully, but because of that mistake, even before getting into this, I knew I need to make sure that I have backups of everything. That also then transpired to me also thinking if the audio might fail, then yeah, could also lose the video fails. I need to make sure that I've got multiple backups. And obviously we know there are people that haven't made that mistake yet and are yet to make it unfortunately, and that's obviously a really, really big one. But that mistake from there has also then influenced, okay, I need to make that there's backups for everything. So it's the mistakes that happen and that you hear happening from other people that are way more important than the wind.

Jason (20:56):

And it's conversations like that and other similar conversations that we've had with us and fellow videographers. That is why personally I want to start a podcast that actively spoke about the stuff like this, actively spoke about the mistakes that we've made, the successes that we've had, and to collaborate all the ideas that everyone in this industry has so that we can build a podcast that is going to give you a bit of relatability

Danny (21:23):

Built by the people for the people scale. Yeah, no, totally. And I think when we talked about before about what we wanted or I guess the vision that we had for this podcast was something that was really relatable to the UK market as well because obviously there are a lot of podcasts out there that, and the US market is quite a bit ahead in terms of from the whole filmmaking, wedding filmmaking scene we'll call it. But it's more of a in the way that films are now and we're getting catching up slowly to the American market, but obviously the prices that obviously some of the Americans charge and stuff like that are way out. So this podcast is definitely going to be more aim towards the UK market. However, not to say for our US friends that you won't get stuff from this because you undoubtedly,

Jason (22:16):

Well, we've got you covered guys all across the pond, across the world. Do not feel left out. There's going to be basically a lot of practical tips within this podcast that I think everyone can relate to. Talking about social media, talk about

Danny (22:29):

Branding,

Jason (22:30):

Talking about what else we talking about,

Danny (22:33):

Which way everything. So like sales, marketing, the top 10 mistakes we will be inviting. We've got a lineup of guests already that have agreed to come onto the podcast, which we're really, really excited about. And also we are really wanting to, because going back to the community aspect of this as well, the two of us are really, really big on building a community that we can all learn from. So we are also going to be looking to bring on people just locally that we've watched their films and stuff like that. We really like what they're doing to bring them on and chat so that other people can see their work and appreciate their work because there are so many good filmmakers out there, amazing ones as well that completely just maybe don't have a massive presence online either, but their work is amazing. So it'd be good to showcase some of those people in that as well. So yeah, this is going to be really, really community focused and business focused as well, and we're really, really excited to get going. And thank you to everybody that so far has been following the page and liking the posts and commenting on the hilarity between Jason and I. But we promise to keep it, there will be some serious points in here when we talk about it, like some of the stuff that we've talked today. But we will make sure that it's dusted off with a little bit of hilarity

Jason (23:56):

And going on to that community aspect of this podcast too. If you're following us on Instagram, you have the ability to message us and instead as voice notes. Now this is the podcast, so it's all about voice. So feel free to send us a voice note if you've got questions or if you see posts about what we're going to be talking about in the future. We'd encourage you to have your say about certain topics. Let's say you've got something about social media, a question about that or a tactic that you use to help you understand social media a little bit better, not just about social media. Anything goes. We want to hear your voice and feature you on this podcast too. I think it'd be really good to get a bunch of opinions about something

Danny (24:33):

Totally

Jason (24:33):

In each section of the podcast where we've got a collection of thoughts that are assembled about one subject. It'd be really good to have a little round table on things like that. So we really encourage you, if you are wanting to contribute to this podcast, send us a voice note and you will be featured if you're making any sense.

Danny (24:52):

And we can understand your accent.

Jason (24:54):

If you're from the northeast of Scotland and you come and you go, you see social media, it's purely dark shit. But I've got, I say about that, that was like Sean Connery meet.

Danny (25:06):

I don't dunno what you're doing with the accents today. I mean mines was much better. I think it was very alker.

Jason (25:14):

Nothing against Falker.

Danny (25:15):

I know it's, it's the default for me, for my old flat. So yeah, I dunno. Where do we go from here?

Jason (25:26):

Well look, we've told you. We told you what we're about. We've told you what we're going, you do the rest. Cut. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast, the first of many. We know you've had to be a bit patient to wait for this one. We've got a bunch coming up for you and we're super excited.

Danny (25:46):

We hope you are too. Take care.