Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ivan Rivero. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Ivan, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a story that illustrates an important or relevant lesson you learned in school
I’ll never forget the one question that changed my life. It was my second year of college at Lamar State College Port Arthur and I just finished my first music video. I remember I stayed up all night editing, and after about six or eight hours I remember looking at the video and thinking it was the best thing I’ve ever done. It had all the pretty shots, I figured the pacing was correct and I thought it served the purpose for the song.
The next day I rushed to my professor, John Freyermuth, very excitedly, thinking I had figured it out. I think it was like seven in the morning, which in hindsight, I’m thankful for him for being able to just sit there to watch it and be honest with me. As he was watching it, his face was blank and I started getting a little discouraged because he wasn’t as excited as I was. You know, this was my first music video, and I was probably 19 at the time, so I was thrilled with my creation. The music video ends, and he just looked at me and asked: “what does it mean?” I looked at him, puzzled, and just repeated what he said. What does it mean mean? He reiterated his question. And just like that, I realized that that simple question could completely destroy my way of thinking. I did not have an answer for him. What did it mean? I asked myself that very question for the next three days.
I went home and re-edited the video once, twice, three times. I just couldn’t get it. What did it mean? Why was I doing this video? What did the video convey? I remember finally put something together that I was happy with, that I thought answered the question. So, I went and showed it to him, again. He watched it and sure enough, he asked me the same thing. “What does it mean?” This time, I was able to answer. He merely replied, “okay,” which wasn’t the answer I was looking for and truthfully, I didn’t even know what answer I was looking for was, so I asked him “okay?” And he said “Yes, okay. As long as you know, that’s okay.”
I’m not going to lie I was furious/flustered. I had poured my heart and soul into this video, edited it for days trying to figure out “What does it mean?” and still all he had to say was okay. However, I think I get it now –as long as I know truthfully what I’m doing, and why I doing it, and I’m honest with myself, it’s okay. No one else’s opinion matters because it’s my art, and as long as I make art, I’ll be okay. To this day, it has stayed with me, those four simple words: “What does it mean?” I think I’m every day for asking me what does it mean.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got a start in this industry thanks to Jeremy Hawa back in 2021 when both my wife and I had the privilege to work on his short film, “The Powder Horn.” I had already had a small body of work with our company Burned Out Studio, but when we went to film this short film I got a taste of what a real set was like. There I met one of my best friends and mentors Donald Kilgore who took me under his wing and brought me out to work on more and more jobs. Slowly I got to meet people who believed in us and the company.
Burned Out Studio is a visual arts company, and we specialize in storytelling by helping companies bring their vision and ideas to life. We take pride on thinking outside the box and truly being able to help your company stand out. We can take a small idea and grow it to help bring awareness to your brand through tailored advertising campaigns to your desired target audience. We usually work with smaller crews to help the process go fast and smooth. Our main goal is to always tell a story with everything we do. Our style is geared towards a more raw documentary feeling- you are the story, we just want to help you share it. We try to stray from doing the same thing over and over again, so we are thrilled to take on new projects because it’s also a way to reinvent ourselves and push us to be even better.
How’d you meet your business partner?
My partner and I met back in high school, right before we graduated and she was already a photographer by then. Back then I was not into making movies, I loved them, but it just wasn’t a palpable idea. The first time I saw her was towards the end of our Senior year -she needed a model for a short film and her friend said I seemed to be what she was looking for. I guess you could say she was also what I was looking for. A couple of shoots later I got curious on what it would be like to be on the other side of the camera, and seeing the beautiful stills she was able to capture was a huge inspiration to my style early on. Once in college, I shot my first short film and it was a ride. I asked her to help me light it since she was way more knowledgeable in the subject than I was. It wasn’t anything crazy, but man did we have fun doing it. We ended up always working together. I would help her with her photoshoots as her permanent bounce board holder and she would come and help me light my short films and music videos. That’s when we had the idea of Burned Out Studio, whose name came to us because, between work, school, our side gig, and the fact that I was also playing music in a local band, we were constantly burned out. Next thing you know, one project turned into another, and yet another! Then when Burned Out Studios was officially a company, we promised ourselves to only take on work that we were excited to do and proud of accomplishing. We wanted to chase this passion for the art and all it implied. We had extensive conversations before we made it official since we were dating, and didn’t want to involve business with our relationship. After 6 years of dating and 2 of marriage, I think we are heading in the right direction.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Early on I think I took on pretty much everything I could take to gain vision, experience, and network. Weddings, events, music videos, real estate, if you needed a camera, I was there! Then I started getting bored, it did not bring joy to just to do something because I was getting paid. Then I aimed towards doing music videos and short films! I would shoot movies, edit them, send them to festivals, and hopefully, get noticed. I thought that would be it! We then worked on “World On Fire” by Nusoul the poet. It was fun, and our team ended up winning a couple of awards for it! As a result, I got approached by a now-good friend of mine, Gordon Williams. He had an idea for a film that he wrote and that changed the way I looked at movies. It was so personal, so raw… “She Loves Her John” is very much different from what I had been doing till that point. I was getting the privilege to tell someone’s story, and that’s no light task. Ever since then, my approach to filmmaking has been “How can I tell a story most effectively?”
We both recently made the jump of doing this full-time. We kept working our part-time jobs and saving money to “eventually make the jump” and it seemed that there was no monetary amount we could save that made us happy. At the same time, we kept working and coming home unhappy with our jobs. Every time we had a gig it was like going to Disney World, we were so excited, up early with our backpacks strapped to our backs and ready to take on the world. We would come home and fantasize about doing it full-time and how great it would be. Earlier this year, in the middle of summer I had COVID and it was the worst I’ve ever felt. I must have been sick for over two weeks, and all I could think about was how I felt like I missed out on living. After I got better I went back to work and I was miserable, day in and day out, just going through the motions. I came home one day and I looked at Paige, my wife, my partner, my best friend, and I just told her “I can’t do this anymore, I want to quit, for real this time. I’m not just saying this. I mean it.” Without hesitation, she said, “Let’s do it, because I can’t do this anymore, either.” Next thing you know we are completely jobless sitting around at home for the first time, ever. Money aside, it was very scary. On the one hand, we kept praying to have more time to put it into our company, and on the other hand, now we had all the time in the world but no direction. We knew what we wanted but didn’t know how to get there, we reached out to our good friends who do this full time, and with a little help and guidance, we set our nerves at ease and were able to get to work, which is what we are doing right now! I wish there was more to the story but it’s not over yet! We invite more people to join our story so we can keep making amazing memories!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Burnedoutstudio.com
- Instagram: @Burnedoutstudio
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@burnedoutstudio19?si=-UHcP0CkIpQHQdk_
Image Credits
Paige Rivero