We recently connected with Bryan Fandrey and have shared our conversation below.

Bryan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s go back in time to when you were an intern or apprentice – what’s an interesting story you can share from that stage of your career?

I have a kind of funny one. A few years ago, when I was interning doing video and social media work for my church, we had a big high school student event every year called ‘Rival Night.’ The theme was Football rivals, and tons of people would come wearing their favorite team’s jerseys and tailgate and stuff, it was a lot of fun. Well, one year leading up to the event we had the idea to put together a mock sports broadcast with a bunch of student involvement, so we took to the studio for a day and shot a ton of green screened videos to use for promotion that year. There were a few major problems though, first, I’d never worked on green screen videos before and the lighting on this particular one wasn’t set up for the wide shots we’d planned. Second, we went in with no plan at all. Nobody wrote a script, nobody had planned what anyone would say or where it was going… so everything was improvised by a bunch of students and a few leaders that came to help out. So, it was a mess, it took us hours to get anything recorded, students came in and out throughout the day, and post production was such a massive headache on my end that it took hours and hours… and in the end, I don’t even think the promos went over all that well. I learned a LOT from that entire process though, I’m grateful for getting the experience, I don’t know how else I would’ve learned all the lessons I’d learned that day otherwise, but I made absolutely sure that we stayed far away from doing any more promotions like that again in the future.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m Bryan, I’m a photographer and videographer/video editor in the North Georgia area. I began editing video in highschool making goofy videos with my friends playing video games online among other things, and then got involved with shooting video and running camera for my church. That eventually sparked enough interest that I chose video production as my major in college, and picked up an internship at the aforementioned church right after high school doing video and social media for them. I picked up photography in the middle of that, and began shooting concerts for fun on the side, and eventually that turned into portraits, proposals, family photos, weddings, and even shooting some editorial work for Publix and The Atlanta Falcons. And I do video work as well, focusing mostly on interview-style videos and event recaps up until this point for various churches and small businesses. And more recently I’ve started to put more time into motion design, creating pre-built assets for use at churches, concert screen content, and music videos.

I think I’ve said this before, but I always try to capture the energy and heart behind something as best I can. Whether that’s an interview, or a concert, or an event I’m capturing, I want the excitement of the moment and the passion of the interviewee to shine through the most. I love capturing stories whether it’s in a still photograph, or a fully produced video.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I just love creating something that makes people feel things, you know? A lot of the time I get to capture the emotion of a moment in such a way that it can be shared, and other times I can cause those emotions to affect someone else by helping them see into a moment or presenting the heart behind something in such a way that they can’t help but get it too.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Yes! As one example, I’ve been really trying to learn more about lighting spaces in an interesting way and becoming a better videographer recently, and the Aputure YouTube channel has been invaluable in that process so far. They have a ton of video resources that have helped me understand lighting better and how to use it to my advantage, plus good practices and tools of the trade.

Also, The Futur has been a huge resource for me as well. And coming from the church world, CRTVChurch and Brady Shearer on Instagram have been huge sources of inspiration for learning and becoming better in both the business and relational side.

Contact Info:

• Website: bryanfandrey.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/editorbryan
• Other: Also check out the website of my creative agency that I’ve recently started with a friend of mine at EDTRCRTV.com