We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brooke Dann. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brooke below.

Brooke, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is the inner healing of myself.

I know others expect me to say when I executed a great project for a business or when I was invited to the State Capital with my colleague to assist with a prominent video shoot with our company. Although those projects exposed me to the substantial aspects that being a freelance and corporate videographer holds, it doesn’t trump the feeling of taking the first step into healing myself.

You come to a point where you realize that your childhood trauma can’t continue to influence your adult decisions. Healing yourself can hurt because it requires you to dig into a place that has been at arm’s length for so long. Once I realized that when one part of you has rotten, it won’t be long before it spreads to the other parts that are still good fruit.

I’m happy to say that healing the innermost crucial parts of me resulted in the sprouting of my tree of growth in my professional and personal life. Because let us be honest, if you’re rotten personally, the fake identity professionally can only last so long.

Brooke, 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?

My creative journey started during my undergraduate degree program. I loved picking up the camera and creating videos and photos. I had doubts about pursuing it as a career because I was told many people focus on it as a hobby. During that time, there weren’t many full-time positions with companies in the corporate realm. I freelanced throughout my degrees except for internships. In those internships, I developed a mindset in corporate storytelling. After graduating with my Master of Arts in Film Production, I was offered a corporate position in higher education as a videographer. I still thank the Marketing and Communications team for taking a chance on me. Accepting that offer caused me to relocate from Florida to Oklahoma. Do I have regrets? Not at all.

I have moved on to another corporate videography position since, but I learned essential information on creating a branded voice for a company through visual storytelling. In honesty, it even helps me in various ways for my freelance business and the connective way of storytelling through videos and photos while keeping it cohesive.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In this industry, pivoting becomes a part of your vocabulary. You never know when a technical issue might arise or when the editing software will crash three times unexpectedly. Most of the time I am a one-woman band doing my job, including overseeing the equipment items, making lists and budgets for new equipment, location scouting, storyboarding, filming, and editing. I enjoy the ability to uphold the responsibility of making sure things stay afloat, but I also enjoy collaborating with others. My main focus when I have to pivot is making it as unnoticeable as possible in front of the subject. While working with me, I want us to become best friends once you walk through those doors. I want to make you feel comfortable, and bringing up the complications that have arisen isn’t a part of the agenda. While connecting with you, I’m thinking about the next best option as a solution to this problem. Therefore, my goal is for the subject to be in the unknown about what’s happening behind the scenes.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

The knowledge I gained through watching other professionals on YouTube is insane. I’m a visual person meaning a visual learner. I love to take out time to learn about a new camera that recently hit the market or updates on the software used to edit my projects. I would tell someone to take advantage of all the knowledge on YouTube. I say that YouTube should call itself YouTube University for the number of nuggets digested.

I want non-creatives to understand many of us have invested our time and money into this craft. There are stories about creatives being lowballed or asked if they could work for free. If you come to someone because you like their work, I promise you they have worked many hours to get that far. Stir away from pushing them to accept your quote when they have placed theirs at the table.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_brookedann
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-dann-905973aa/

Image Credits
I captured and edited all the uploaded photos.