We caught up with the brilliant and insightful David Rodriguez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, David thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I started making home videos with Special effects of my daughter. Once I got good enough at shooting/editing and knew I could charge for my services I needed a name for this new creative business venture.

One day my 3 year old daughter had my phone and was showing my grandmother a video I made of her, and when asked who made the video she said “daddy film it.”

Im a dad. I film. I edit. “Dad Film Edit….DAD FILMED IT”

Felt like magic. Family friendly sounding enough for commercial and small business and different and random enough to stand out in Music Videos when flashed on the screen.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Im a creative director, Music Video Director, and Editor disciplined in The Adobe Suite (Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Media Encoder) and 3D Softwares such as Blender.

I am a one stop shop for all your creative and marketing needs to be turned into tangible assets for your campaigns that will grab the viewers attention through my very unique style of shooting and editing.

I have directed over 60 Music videos totaling several million views on YouTube.

I have worked with over 25 restaurants and small businesses in my community creating successful social media campaigns.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Doing solid work every time. Every opportunity that was presented no matter how unknown the artist or business was or even how little it was paying I always felt I had to go above and beyond in executing for them because it wasn’t for them , it was for ME.

Sure, I’d feel frustrated at times but In creative work, Laziness is noticed right away. I was a one man team in charge of planning, shooting, and editing and I knew my style was unique so even underpaid opportunities were still a platform for me to show off my talents and hopefully wow someone in that clients network. Sure enough, more often than not, it would. Doing good business in a professional manner and providing a stellar service that no one can deny you spent time on always led to positive word of mouth and referrals.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I was working at a car dealership and wanted to begin this journey but didn’t have a camera and couldn’t afford just having had a daughter a $4000.00 cinema camera.

I saved up $500.00 and bought a small 4K DJI Osmo Pocket camera that connects to your phone and did stabilized motion. Using that AND my iPhone (which also shot 4K) and editing off a small MacBook I began to do little editing experiments with my daughter where I’d film her kicking a soccer ball that would explode , or editing her the same size as her Barbie’s and placing her in a Barbie house and I’d upload them to Instagram. Soon enough, a few rappers would see my little shot and edited experiments on social media and thought “if this dad is making these type of videos at home for his daughter, he could probably just shoot and edit my entire music video and make it look cool”

That’s exactly what happened. My first music video director job paid $200 and the one after that a little more, and so on and so on until I finally afforded my cinema camera and computer set up that allows me to edit at the pace I currently do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Instagram.com/dadfilmedit