Why Most Wedding Films Suck, And What To Do About It w/ Patrick Moreau Of Muse Storytelling

"It takes more than pointing your camera at a human to really capture character in your video. While most wedding have a bunch of people, and often prominently feature a couple, they rarely have any character."

This was the opening line of a recently published blog post by today's guest, Patrick Moreau. The blog post in question was titled Why Most Wedding Films Suck, and needless to say, it ruffled some feathers.

The post Why Most Wedding Films Suck had over 1,000 shares and 20k views in the first couple days–and created a firestorm on Facebook.

Patrick joins us today to dive deeper into the sentiments that drove him to write the post, and what the average filmmaker can do to not only produce films that don't suck, but ones that cross borders and inspire viewers beyond the wedding film industry.

If you don't know Patrick already, he's the co-founder of Stillmotion, a video company that went from shooting their first wedding with photo and video for $250, alllllll the way to shooting for some of the biggest brands in the world a few years later.

How big? How about the NFL, MLB, CBS, Callaway, Canon, Toyota. The list goes on. Really big. Oh, and they've also won five Emmys.

Do you want to hear the crazy part? Many of those brands approached Stillmotion to work with them after seeing one of their wedding videos. Hard to believe right?

The thing is, Patrick and his team are master storytellers, and the elements of a well-told story remain the same no matter what you're covering. Whether it's one of the most important days of a couple's life together, or one of the most important days of a bunch of 300-pound dudes smashing the crap out of each other, the principals are the same.

Patrick's frustration with the lack of storytelling chops in the industry is the focus of his other company, Muse Storytelling. At Muse, he teaches filmmakers how learning the art of storytelling is the biggest thing you can do to move your business forward. It's storytelling, not a new drone or camera setup that is the thing that's going to elevate you to getting those 10, 20, and 50 thousand dollar clients on a consistent basis.

Storytelling has become something of a buzzword as of late, but we want to clarify what it really means, and how you can go about crafting great stories, and getting paid what your worth to tell them.

What does storytelling mean to you in your process? Have you thought about or taken part in a Muse Storytelling workshop before? What did you think? Leave a comment and let us know!

Quotes:

“We didn’t want to be wedding filmmakers. We didn’t want to fall into a genre and just make that thing, we were much more interested in people and stories.” [6:30]

“I think people need to realize that the biggest thing that’s holding them back, is themselves. And we often don’t take a moment to actually do that. We think it’s the industry, we think it’s our brides, we think it’s our market.” [13:15]

“I wasn’t selling him, I was getting excited like I am now, going ‘Oh my god I see this, this is what we could do!' That is the number one way that we actually increased our bookings [and rates]. It was actually getting to know people.” [32:26]

“I don’t know how many times we’ve actually sat down and said, ‘in 20 years when I’m retired, what am I going to look back on and remember? What am I actually going to care about?’ Now I get that a lot of the audience right now is going to get defensive and go, ‘ But it’s not about me. It’s about my clients, as long as they were happy.’ But is that the life you want to live? Where you never actually cared about doing something that mattered to you?” [39:05]  

* Don’t forget to sign up for Patrick’s webinar HERE! *

In this episode:

- Why satisfied clients are not the most important thing you should be focusing on in your video business
- How to deepen the story while doubling your rate in a way that clients can't resist (seriously)
- What big corporate brands really want from a video partner
- An in-depth explanation of Patrick's blog post, and where some people got it wrong

Links:

Stillmotion
Muse Storytelling
Once more, the link to sign up to Patrick’s upcoming webinar
The blogpost in question: Why Most Wedding Films Suck

Follow Ryan on Twitter @RyanKoral
Follow Matt on Twitter @lifestagefilms and Instagram @matt.c.davis
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