Stay at Home Video Producer Business

by David
(U.K)

Video Producer

My name is David. I grew up in the South of England but moved North where I heard that people talked to each other !

I took up with Carol over the road who had four kids but she had to go out to work.

I thought that TV was the preserve of the Media and Big Business when ordinary people should have access to it to tell their own stories, and promote their own businesses.

With two partners I set up a video company and trawled around the local Council investigating their Policies and which ones I felt that they were not doing anything about.

They had a commitment to Young People's Health but were doing little about it.

While the kids were at school I would haul myself round the corridors of Power and finally after 9 months I secured funding. I had in the meantime been going on Video Production Courses at Local Colleges. We produced the Video and from there gained more work from new commissions in unrelated areas.

The hardest part is doing anything for the first time. That first video took 9 months and 3 edits before it was completed. The last one we made before going our separate ways took 2 weeks and was much slicker. Keep going and you’ll get faster, better, more skilled and work out how to do the same jobs quicker, no matter what you do.

I think that running your own business is a good lesson in taking responsibility for yourself and is almost a rite of passage in laying claim to being a proper grown-up.

We made twenty five short films in three years and they are now housed in the North West Film Archive. Eventually I was being paid more than Carol so she stopped working and looked after the kids and enjoyed escaping the drudgery of her 9 to 5 while helping me out in the Company.

All three of the Partners went on to work in the Broadcast Industry. I myself worked for three years in a Newsroom for a Sports Channel as a VT Editor turning out News packages, Match Edits, Title Sequences and Promos.

I would say to anyone thinking about it... once you’ve found your partners, commit yourself for a set period of time, e.g. 3 years. Don’t plan as if it’s going to go on forever, and make sure that at the end of the 3-year period that you all have Plan B in place, as we all did.