We were lucky to catch up with Danielle & Jared Zacharias recently and have shared our conversation below.
Danielle & Jared, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
When we first started our business, we both had full time jobs in education. We dreamed of making this our full time business and so took steps to make that happen. Every time we we filmed a wedding, we’d buy a new piece of equipment. After a few years, we realized we had to take the plunge, and we are so glad we did! We feel like going full time was such a great move for many reasons. Our schedule opened up for mid-week shoots and we got to have a more flexible schedule in general for having kids and family time! Not only that but taking the step of taking our own business more seriously helps our clients to trust us more. We were also able to start a second brand (our first being weddings and events, and our second being corporate). Being able to focus on just our business has been a wonderful thing!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hi, we are Jared and Danielle, a husband and wife video team. We got into this business almost 15 years ago, the same year we got married! A bunch of our friends got married that year and we filmed a couple of weddings to see if this was something we wanted to do and if we could work well together. Turns out we LOVE working together and we absolutely fell in love with capturing stories. Our style has grown over the years and now we consider our style cinematic documentary. We capture the important parts of your day in the way they actually happened, but in a cinematic and story-telling way. We’re most proud of how we make each wedding day unique to each couple’s story. We just love approaching the wedding day as a blank canvas that we get to fill in and put together. And we love the thought of couples being able to relive their wedding day, all the parts they remember and all the parts they missed.
We want our future clients to know that we take pride in our work. We feel so privileged that we get to do this job for a living, we have a dream job. And we would LOVE to get to know you, your story and what you’re excited for on your big day.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Over the years we have tried a few different ways to advertise but those things haven’t really gone anywhere. Our best source of new clients have always been referrals! We feel so blessed and lucky to work with incredibly people in our field and we are so honored when they want to work with us again. We are so thankful!!
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
By far, the most rewarding aspect of being a creative is preserving memories. As we lose loved ones, we tend to go back and dig up old photos and videos. As a kid I always loved taking photos and even making movies with my friends on my parent’s old video camera (remember VHS?)! Being able to go back and watch those silly things has been a pleasure. A few years ago my grandma gave me some old 8mm film reels that she found. I had them transferred to digital and edited some of them together as a surprise. People in our family had never seen these old films from the 50’s and 60’s. Being able to create that feeling for others inspires me. Knowing that our couples’ kids will watch their parents dancing their first dances, saying their vows and being in love just warms my heart. And then being able to transfer that to our corporate brand, telling the stories of businesses is just as inspiring. And the fact that everyone has a different story and I’m always learning something new is the best way to continue to be motivated to be creative in our work!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sidebysidecinema.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sidebysidecinema/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sidebysidecinema
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djzacharias/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/SidexSideCinema
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEJq2Suow_x6x-OU1cRSR-g
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sidebyside-cinema-escondido
- Other: We also have a corporate brand: www.scatteredlightmedia.com
Image Credits
Summer Rae Photography Kristina Davis Photography Shannon Prince Photography