We recently connected with Jacob Steed and have shared our conversation below.

Jacob, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

Slightly unserious, facetious answer: the definition of the word ‘pan’ with respect to camera movement.

Actual serious answer: I think a lot of companies get fatigued when it comes to video, something essential in today’s corporate world. There’re many routes to take — you could hire a big production company, an individual freelancer like myself, build an in-house team, or scrap it together yourself with an iPhone and CapCut — all valid routes, but the basic need is simple communication across space and time with the people you’re trying to reach.

Because video is the best way to do that, and quality production certainly isn’t cheap, there’s anxiety: how will our video compare to our competitor’s, will it even get seen, is this contractor actually capable of doing what they say they will, and do they *actually* care about our success?

Something I’ve seen, more-so in the corporate space and less-so, yet still present, with small businesses, is that people feel more comfortable hiring a video contractor who’s already made basically, exactly what they have in mind, which is usually based off of someone else’s video, instead of taking a chance, as they see it, on someone who hasn’t maybe made *exactly* what they’ve envisioned, but whose technical and creative expertise is more than capable. They’d rather have a specialist in, say, short-form content creation, or brand films, infomercials, VSLs, or online course creation, to do just that thing, rather than a generalist, which feels like a bigger risk.

That’s a challenge for me, because my work is all over the place — I’ve made tons of wedding films, worked with businesses doing short-form content for social media (either as ads or organic posts), real estate videos and home tours, testimonials, brand films, VSLs, interviews, online courses, company culture and recruitment films, video portraits, and my own personal projects include travel vlogs and experimental films. My work is diverse and I love it that way: it keeps me at my creative edge, really cuts down on the monotony, and this heightened enthusiasm I bring to shoots reaches into the future to improve the end product (i.e., the video) and better results from that video going to work.

So regardless of who you hire — because the same video done ten different ways can all meet the same goal — what’s most important is knowing that your videographer actually cares about your success, both for the project in question and for your business in general. If their priorities seem to lie elsewhere, you won’t have much of a guarantee that the money you spend on them is actually going to make your business more valuable.

Jacob, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

There’s a video application for pretty much every single business need. Because, second only to a face-to-face conversation, video is *the* best form of communication, and because much of the work in running a business *is* communication, a video can steer the hearts and minds of those you want to reach way faster and more effectively than what one person can do by themselves.

I’ve been making videos as a hobby since I was ten years old and still consider it my life’s passion. My clients trust me with creative direction, storytelling, and supplying all the gear and handling the tech so that they can focus on telling their story. But before we hit record, I need to actually know my client; I’m asking tons of questions about them, their business, their goals, and what success looks like to them. Everything they say is important because it’s helping me see the world the through their eyes, which then informs every creative and technical decision in my process.

I’ve helped clients sell properties, scale their client base and revenue, hire the best talent in their industries, and impact their audience on social media — these things were just accomplished through video. I’m surprised at how many people try to do it the hard way!

Any good videographer, or production company, or in-house team will follow this basic principle: that alignment on goals, story, and strategy comes before anything else. Where I differ from my competition is the creative process that follows. My stylistic priorities are authenticity, relatability, transparency, clarity, and vibrance — in this order. I try to steer clear of trends — like speed-warp transitions, glitchy overlays, face-tracking and eye-centering — unless such is serving our central goal. With extremely rare exceptions, I also don’t use any third-party effects, animation templates, or color presets; everything, except for the music (I’m no musician), is done by hand, which creatively stretches me and gives my clients something truly unique and customized to them that no one else could make.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Yes! I got my professional start with weddings when I was 17, which, while many in my industry who don’t do weddings trash wedding videographers as the ‘bastards of the industry,’ filming wedding videos, especially going at it solo, is one of the best ways to learn filmmaking because you’re handling cameras, talent direction, lighting, audio capture, audio mixing, editing, color grading — basically exercising the entire skillset of filmmaking in one jam-packed day, all by yourself (plus the days of editing that follow — then you’ve got to weave a story out of the hours of material you’ve captured!).

The skills I learned making wedding films — and I’ll still take on a few weddings a year if there’s a good connection with the happy couple — translated seamlessly over to corporate and commercial work, which is the majority of what I do today. In fact, it’s way easier; hours on set are typically shorter; I can easily control factors like lighting and audio, and we have plenty of time to get things (reasonably) perfect in-camera. I’m grateful for those who gave me the opportunities to actually shoot these wedding videos, to make mistakes and learn, improve, and to grow as an artist and entrepreneur.

Despite wedding films and commercials being two entirely different types of video, the workflow and thought process that go into each are fundamentally similar. The medium of video — paring a rapid succession of related images with sound — is inherently a storytelling device. We’re weaving ideas, images, words, movement, action, and sound in a specific order that creates a feeling and meaning in our audience. No other medium is quite as powerful, hardly anything else is as fascinating to me, and the possibilities of the medium couldn’t be exhausted over multiple lifetimes; it’s a craft and career I won’t ever totally master, which gives me hope in that there will always be more creative expansion to explore.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I see the strands of my life — professional, creative, spiritual, intellectual, personal — weaving into something I can’t yet totally understand. I’m also big on reincarnation — not that I can prove it true like a mathematical theorem, but it’s a philosophy of life that implores me to make choices that will build a beautiful life that benefits all — and I choose to believe that we come to Earth to learn something we didn’t catch the last time around (and that, ultimately, it’s a spirit of fun, creative exploration that leads us, or at least me, to this decision to leave the perfection of Heaven and take a physical body on Earth). So I see my journey as an artist, filmmaker, entrepreneur, yogi, and child of God — as imperfectly as I undertake it — as building toward an existence that creates maximum happiness and love for me and everyone else in my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: steedfilms.com
• Instagram: @steedfilms / @steed
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steedfilms/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/jacobsteed

Image Credits
Monika Normand Creative