One of the greatest complements I get from a bride is when she refers a friend of hers to me.  That means the world to me.  It means I did a good job and provided the bride with something she will cherish forever and she wants her friends to have the same thing for their wedding day.  This past weekend I shot a wedding for Ashley & David.  Ashley was sent to me by Lindsey, whose wedding I did in October 2008.  I was able to talk with Lindsey and her husband Chris for a few minutes Saturday.  They were telling me how they just celebrated their one year anniversary and one thing they did was they watched their wedding video again.  I could go on and tell you more about it, but let them tell you:

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I love the fact that were willing to take a few moments out of a special day for Ashley and share with you how much their video means to them.

In the coming weeks, I will be posting some new trailers for wedding I have worked on this fall.

I have said for a while now that the traditional wedding is no more.  Weddings today can be a fairy tale romance, a quite, somber occasion, or even a lively, almost party event.  But, one thing remains the same at every wedding, the wedding party entrance.  The groomsmen walk up the aisle usually followed by the bridesmaids and then the bride being escorted by her father or someone special in her life.  This is mostly done to some very elegant, or classical music.  Well, that is until today.  I found the following clip on YouTube today and wanted to share it with you:

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I think this is just one of the most amazing things I have ever seen at a wedding.  But, it is also a great reason to have a professional videographer.  Think how much better this would have been if it had been shot with two or three camera angles. Using professional grade cameras on tripods, not a shaky hand held shot.  Most of all, do you think the pictures alone will do this entrance justice?   Sometimes, video is the best thing to have at a wedding.

Seems like every company or business has a mission statement.  I have even known a few families that have mission statements.  I never really understood the whole need for a company to tell you what it is they do and how they want to do it.  I mean, if you are using that business, don’t you already know what it is they do?

I think companies should move away from mission statements and move back to customer service.  It amazes me how customer service has seem to have been tossed to the side in the name of profit.  Companies have put the priority on the dollar and not on the person spending that dollar.  And the saddest part is that this loss of customer service is not limited to private businesses; it has spread to our government as well.  Federal, State or local, it just seem like the people who are taking your tax dollars just don’t care or seem annoyed that you are asking them to do their job.

I will give you a case in point; today my wife and I had to run some errands downtown.  We had to go down to the city/county building to renew my business license and a few other things.  We had to walk the entire length of the building, twice, to find out that we were in the wrong building.  We had to go next door to the OLD courthouse.  Once we got inside there, it was another search and find journey to find the right office.  When we finally found where we wanted to go, the people working in the office acted as if we were disturbing them.  I mean, how dare we come into THEIR office and have the gall to ask them to help us do something they are PAID to do.  PAID with my tax dollars I might add.  One girl in the office was talking on her cell phone making plans for the night with her boyfriend, one guy was at the desk opposite of her slowly pecking away at a keyboard. I think he was trying to kill time or maybe he just didn’t care.  But, the thing that really set me off about all this is the sign at the back of the room “We are happy to serve you.”   WHAT!!  There wasn’t a happy person in the room.  Customer service gone out the window.

All this got me thinking about what I do; I provide a service and am proud of the work I do.  I take pride in my work and want nothing more than for the bride and her family to be happy with the product I give them.  I know that money is tight today, so when someone books me to shoot their wedding, I know that they are spending some hard earned money.  With that being said, I want to share with you my “Mission Statement”:

“You, the customer, are the most important thing to me.  You are not dependent on me, I am dependent on you.  You are not an outsider to my business — you are part of it.  I am not doing you a favor by providing you a service, you are doing me a favor by allowing me the opportunity to serve you.  My work is not finished until you are 100% happy with the work I have done.”

Customer come first with me.  That is my mission statement, are you listening GM?

Back in 1976 my family got cable TV in our house. Now, it was not the cable we have today. We only had 13 channels and it was mainly to make the signal look better.  You see, back in the day we had to have an antenna on top of the house to get any channels and then it fuzzy at best.  When we got cable I asked my parents for a TV for my room.  You have to remember this was 1976 and most homes had one TV in the house period.  Non of my friends had a TV in their room, at best most had a record player and a radio.  So to ask and get a TV in my room was huge. It was the greatest thing my parents ever did and put me on the path to where I am today.

You see I had always loved television.  Not just to sit and watch for hours on end, but I studied it.  I wanted to know how they did the things they did.  I wanted to learn how they set up shots or scenes, how the script was written, I wanted to know everything.  But most of all, I wanted to have a job in television more than anything in the world.

I grew up in a small farm town in east central Indiana.  You either were a city kid or you were a farm kid and worked in the corn fields.  I was a city kid and was proud of it and knew what I wanted to do.  So you could just imagine how thrilled I was when I found out my high school had set up a small television station and allowed the students to do all the work.  I, of course, signed up for the program on my first day of high school.  I learned so much and loved every minute of it

I tell you all of this to give you an idea of where I came from and how some 25 years later I am still loving every minute of what I do and how proud I am of my work.  Today I got awarded for my work.  Today I was named the top videographer in the East Tennessee area according to the WTNZ Fox 43 Hot List.  I was nominated back in January and the voting ended the first part of this month and today I got the results.  I am thrilled to have won this, but I also know that means I have to work that much harder to prove I deserve the award.  I intend to do just that.  I pride my self on making the best video possible and that I give you something that you can watch for years to come.  Something you are proud to show your friends and family, your kids and even your grand kids some day.

So, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to all of those who voted for me, all of the brides I have worked with lately who allowed me to be a part of their special day.  But, most of all, I want to thank my wife, Leeann.  I would not be where I am today were it not for her and her love.  She puts up with all strange schedules, all the meetings I have, and all the late nights I have had just to get the video finished on time.  Thank you Leeann.

I have been so excited to tell all of you about a new service for all Knoxville area brides.  The Lounge is a great location for brides to plan their wedding.  There is no pressure to do anything but relax and plan your wedding in peace and quite.  The Lounge is run by some really great gals, Brenda Kelly, Rachel Duke & Christley Chambers.

The main purpose behind The Lounge is to provide brides with a place to plan their weddings other than the kitchen table or the busy dress shop.  You, as a bride, have enough going on without feeling like you are pressured into putting your wedding together in a hurry or without being able to get as much information as possible.  The Lounge provides you with a huge amount of resources for planning your wedding.  Current wedding books and magazines are just a few things they have for you.

There are also portfolios of wedding vendors that will help you with your wedding needs. Need a good photographer, caterer, cake designer, or even special lighting you can find it all at The Lounge.  The portfolios give you information about each vendor and also some examples of their work. Why spend hours on line or in the yellow pages trying to find that perfect wedding vendor when all the information is right there for you to look at.  Think of all the phone calls you will save yourself from by just spending at hour at The Lounge looking at the portfolios?

There are also private meeting rooms for you to use.  This is a great way for you and your bridesmaids to meet to do party favors.  A great place to meet with vendors.  How many times have vendors asked you to meet them at Starbucks or Panera Bread?  As a wedding vendor that has the prilvidge of working from home, I know I have asked many a bride to meet me at Starbucks. While it is a nice place to meet, it is almost impossible to have a good conservation with a bride or show a video to anyone with that much noise in the background.

One of the best parts of The Lounge for the bride is that all the vendors are hand picked by the staff.  The vendors are picked because they are the best of the best in the Knoxville area.  As a vendor we can’t just go in and ask to be a member.  You have to be invited to be a part of The Lounge vendor list.  So when you look at the list of vendors you know that they are the best and you will not go wrong with any one you choose.

As a special to brides who visit The Lounge and book Midnight Magic Studios for their wedding I am giving a 20% discount on your entire video package.  Please visit The Lounge at 1645 Down Town West Blvd., Suite 6 in the West Knoxville area.   I look forward to hearing from new brides at The Lounge.

Today I had the pleasure of meeting a wonderful young bride by the name of Corissa.  She is getting married in April.  That is not that unsuall, April is a great month here to get married. What is diffrent about Corissa is how her wedding is coming together, let me fill you in:

About a month ago, I was listening to the radio here in the office while editing some video.  The local afternoon talk guy was asking people what were they doing to save money in these tough times.  I heard all kinds of things like cutting coupons, using leftovers and on and on.  But then this female voice came on and said that she was wanting to get married this upcoming April and her parent had only given her a very limited budget and was wanting to know if anyone could help her have the wedding of her dreams for little or no money.  Well, she opened the flood gates with that one.  Wedding vendors will jump at the chance to do anything for free advertising.  We all live and die by what we put out there.  Well, first a venue stepped up and offered their site for the wedding, then a wedding planner offered her services, then a carter, then a rental company and so on.  Well, I did not want to be left out so I called in and offered to video her wedding for free.  The calls  just kept coming in by the dozens.

At the end of the hour, this girl had everything she needed for her wedding. ALL FREE!  It’s called a sponsored wedding and the way it works is you go to vendors that you want to use and tell them you will advertise their service at your wedding in return for their service at no cost.  You’re not going to get a huge diamond ring for free, but you could get the dress, food, photographs, and other services for little or no cost.  Great idea for these tough times.  Now, vendors are not going to do a lot of sponsored weddings each year, in fact, I am only doing two this year.  So don’t go out there hoping to get everything for free, but with a little bit of luck, you may be able to get some things at a lower cost.

I met Corissa for the first time today and we had a great meeting at my new favorite place “The Lounge” (I will tell you about this place in a future blog).  Corissa is looking for this wedding to be a party, and from the sound of it, it will be.  It will be a media circus as well with the radio station doing a live remote from the wedding in addition to a local TV station and the newspaper too.  I am really looking forward to this wedding, it is going to be so much fun.

First off, I want to welcome everyone to the new Midnight Magic Studios web site.  I have spent the past 2 weeks working on every aspect of this site.  I wanted this site to provide brides with the information they need to choose the best videographer they can.  It is my hope that at least some of the information I post here will help one bride in making the best choice that fits them.

I am also going to take some time and tell all of you a bit about me and my family, the fun and exciting things we do (and even the boring things as well). I want all of you come back to the site often as I will be updating the site on a regular schedule.  As new information and technology comes along I will be sharing that with you as well.

I am attaching a link to a web site for our local Fox station: http://wtnz.cityvoter.com/contests/best-of-the-wtnzfox43-com-hot-list/4208   I hope all of you will go to the site and scroll down to the videographer listings and vote for me.  This the Knoxville Hot List, a way for you to choose the best of the best in Knoxville.  I have been nominated to be on the Hot List by local wedding vendors and brides.  I consider it an honor to be on the list.  I get nothing if I win, but it would help the business a bit.

Well, as I said WELCOME and I hope that in the future I will post something here that will help you.  Use the contact me page to give me suggestions for this blog.