IN[FOCUS]

I hope you watched Archiving Part 1, but if you didn’t, I have to ask: What are you doing now to archive your films to avoid headaches and small sales in the future?

Lets be honest. When is the last time you sold a copy of a clients wedding you had to “re-burn” (DVD) or export (HD delivery in .mov file) for MORE then $500 or $1,000? If you are like me, you probably charge less then $50 for a DVD copy, or even if it’s something you have to pull out of the archive, maybe no more then $200.

How much of a pain is it to track a client down once they are back into “work and real life” mode? If you have to, try to sell them their archive for their anniversary. Make a goal list for what you will do with the money from those sales. By new gear? Pay for your seat at In[Focus]?

I’ve hemmed and hawed about this for a good year, and moving forward I’ve decided that it’s just not worth my time and energy AFTER the wedding, to try and sell my clients on a new form of archiving. I want them to have the best when they are at their best! Meaning, I want them to have an HD .mov file of their wedding when they are still basking in the post wedding glow. I don’t want to wait until three years later to sell them on that.  I may have missed a few years of referrals, and by year three I’m going to wish I never edited the film like I did and probably want to re-edit it before I send it out to them (which I won’t do because they aren’t paying for that). Hopefully you get the picture.

I want to know: Do you give your client a HD file or file based archive? Or as of right now does your client only have in their possession a few DVD copies of the biggest day of their life? Discuss.

Meg Simone

Wedding filmmaker, avid skier, and travel enthusiast!

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When did you start your business? Do you go to bed at night wondering how soon it will be until clients from yesteryear track you down and want to know why their DVDs don’t play or how they can transfer their VHS wedding copy?

I know when I started my business, the internet did exist, but I didn’t know 1/10th or have access to 1/1,00oth of the information we do today. I was doing what I knew best at that time. BUT it was not good enough. I know for a fact the DVDs I used for weddings from 2000-2007 are not going to work much longer if they even work today. I just haven’t heard from those clients…yet.

I want to contact them with a solution first. I’m trying to clear my conscience and get my past clients a new and improved way of archiving that will benefit not only them, but me.

This is Part 1 in a 3 part series on Archiving. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you have been doing to archive your old wedding videos.

Part 2: Current Years
Part 3: Transfer Responsibility

Meg Simone

Wedding filmmaker, avid skier, and travel enthusiast!

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Hi, I am Taryn Bills, co-owner of Serendipity Videography in Phoenix, Arizona. My husband Jeff and I started our journey into Wedding Cinematography almost 6 years ago. Jeff was a Emmy Award Winning News Videographer ready to make his way out of the news business and I was a Broadcasting Major from Arizona State University who had worked in TV, Radio and was in a corporate Sales and Marketing gig that I was just plain over.

One day we got a call from my best friend who was getting married and she said “Hey I hate to do this to you because I want you to be a guest at my wedding but can you shoot my wedding film?” I shouted “YES!” because I had been saying for years “We should be shooting weddings.” Jeff, however, had not been on board until then we were both at a crossroads in our careers so I signed us up.

So at the end of the night after we shot the wedding I looked at him and said “So what did you think?” and he said “I LOVED it! Shooting a wedding is everything that shooting news used to be.” Tonight I got to tell a great story,”  – he was sold.

I of course was ecstatic because what girly girl doesn’t want to work in weddings? It was that day that Serendipity Videography was born. The word Serendipity means to find something great by accident and that is exactly how our business has come together. Piece by piece it has formed like a puzzle in a very serendipitious fashion. Plus we love the movie Serendipity and we are huge John Cusack fans so we had to be Serendipity Videography.

When it all began I was shooting with Jeff but as much as I enjoyed the shooting, my passion was truly the sales, marketing and the business aspects of Serendipity. So I left the shooting behind and became the brains of the operation handling all sales, marketing and business and he is the Creative Genius overseeing our team of Videographers and Editors.

PS. When you watch my video please know that we actually do understand audio. Our office gets bloody hot and that hum in the background is our fan on full blast. If I didn’t have that on I would have been sweating profusely and that would be gross and a bad first impression.

PSS. Oh yea and apparently my word of the day when I shot this was “super”.

TarynP

Taryn Bills attended Arizona State University and graduated Cum Laude from the Walter Cronkite School of Broadcast Journalism. She worked in community relations at the Phoenix NBC affiliate, then moved on to an account executive position for Infinity Broadcasting where she discovered her passion for Sales and Marketing. After 3 years she left radio for a 3-year stint in pharmaceutical sales, during which time she and her husband started Serendipity Videography. She has served as the sales and marketing director of award winning Serendipity for 6 years as well as with their baby sister company Simply Cinema. When she is not busy growing her own businesses, she offers marketing and consulting services for various companies who need assistance in growing their brand and increasing their sales.

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