By Michael J. Vanderveen

Recently one evening Zach & I were celebrating the completion of a project that has spanned several years in the making (you’ll learn more about that soon enough), and the way we celebrated was by opening a special beer Zach has been aging since 2012, and watching through all our old reels. We started coincidently enough with a reel which came out the same year as the beer we’d opened, 2012.

As you will see moving forward we’ve improved on how we use titles in our reels quite a bit, and our music selection. I take full responsibility for both those issues. What was I thinking? Haha, but otherwise the issues with this reel are simple. We had a very small amount of footage to choose from, we had only taken on a couple paid jobs, and a few more unpaid ones. The thought process was that we had to have a reel to show what we can do; the problem was we didn’t have enough to fill one. If variety is the spice of life, it’s the backbone of a good reel.

The 2013 reel is non-existent due to that being a year of personal losses for us and big changes here in the company. We changed personnel, we lost some equipment in unfortunate ways, and we struggled. So this next reel was our triumphant return to pursuing our dreams and passions, meet our 2014 reel.

New logo, new company name, new cameras, new everything. I think the jump from 2012 to 2014 represents our largest growth in between any two reels we’ve released. The changes we made as team were huge. Beyond that as you can see having variety in your work is so extremely beneficial to improving your reel. You just have more to choose from. I will also say I did a much better job choosing the music this time around.

That reel helped us hit the ground sprinting in 2014, one of the most magical years of my life. The year of our greatest growth as a company. We began partnering with local charities to give back our time including Make-A-Wish, Seneca Family of Agencies, & City of Hope. Our work started to offer opportunities to travel more and more. Most importantly though we were working with tons of new amazing people. Clients to us always become like old friends, we get so attached to them and learn from each of them. This year we made a lot of great friends, which led us to release our 2015 reel.

This was the first reel we released where I really sat back and said “Whoa” as I watched it. I was shocked at how far we’d come. The reel had such a variety and moments with real punch to them. Then we saw another year of huge growth, more traveling, and more new friends. We left our day jobs, and became full time videographers. We were doing our dream jobs, and no longer was it part time. Everything was changing, everything was growing. We invested in equipment we never dreamed we’d own, and we shared memories with clients I’ll never forget.

Now I’m very thrilled to present to you our latest reel. Before we watch it I want to take this opportunity to thank you all. Working with you, sharing our work with you, learning from you, and befriending you has been the greatest journey I could have ever dreamed of. I’m posting this today because I want you to see how we’ve grown, and how it’s all because of the people who follow us, work with us, and believe in us. I am already thrilled to say 2016 has been an incredible year, and I do not doubt our 2017 reel will be even better than the last. Now I leave you with our latest reel so that you can see how far we’ve come, and I will continue to imagine how far we can keep going.

Thank you,

Michael