Full-Service Video Production

Q. Describe the most common types of jobs you do for your clients.

A. I produce documentary and image video for non-profit, faith-based, broadcast and corporate clients. Recent productions include a six episode series on the history of Christianity in America, image videos for faith-based groups, a series of three music videos produced in rural Haiti and a Jazz concert series.

Q. Describe three recent jobs you've completed.

A. 1. Valerie Mossman-Celestin is the Executive Director of Haitian Artisans for Peace International, in Musac, Haiti. HAPI is a capacity building project funded in part by the United Methodist Committee On Relief. Valerie shared her testimony with me while on a visit to Musac in 2011. It is a spiritual journey that began with the question, “What is help?”

2. People’s Resource Center community exists “to respond to basic human needs, promote dignity and justice, and create a future of hope and opportunity for the residents of DuPage County, Illinois through discovering and sharing personal and community resources.”

3. Christian Family Services is a non-profit child-placing agency licensed in Missouri and Illinois and supported by several area churches and many generous donors. Though all foster parents, adoptive parents, and staff are Christian, services are provided to foster children, adoptive children, natural parents, and counseling clients without regard to religious affiliation. CFS asked me to help them put this video together. It is an honor to serve those who serve!

Q. What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A. Non-profit organizations looking to broaden their development base and reach new audiences, need to focus on story-telling. Testimonials, presented in a creative, social-media friendly format get your audiences talking to each other about you! That's great marketing.

Q. If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?

A. High-end video production and post-production equipment has become affordable compared to equipment prices from a decade ago. While the price of the kitchen has gone down. The real question is,"Do you know how to cook?"

Q. What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?

A. 1. Who is your audience?

2. How do you want your audience to respond after seeing the video?

3. How many minutes do you want your video to be?

4. How many different locations will we record in?

5. How can we tell your story visually? For example, do you have photographs, stock video clips, etc.

Q. Do you have a favorite story from your work?

A. Wednesday, May 23, 2001 Jim Quattrocki, Kevin Jacobson and I arrive at an air strip in Moshi, Tanzania and board a single engine, fixed landing gear plane operated by African Inland Mission. Andy, the pilot, is a tall, slender American from Boulder, Colorado. It rained the night before – now the clouds began to lift and we took off, flying around Mt. Kilimanjaro and her more rugged sister Mt. Meru. We then head out over the world famous Serengeti Plain, Ngorongoro Crater and Odoval Gorge.

The ancient green grasslands are dotted with huts and animals. The route takes us west across the Serengeti to the southern tip of Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile River and on in to Bukoba, Tanzania on the western shore.

Q. How did you decide to get in your line of work?

A. I began my media career at the West Chicago Press, a weekly newspaper in DuPage, County Illinois. After high school, I enrolled at Harding University in the school of journalism. They required spelling so I moved to radio. That led me into television. The rest, they say, is history!