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

Alright, David thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

What I think it takes to be successful is a daily practice of persistence and consistency. These are the ingredients for growth both for yourself and your career.

It’s easy to keep caught up in the ever growing instant gratification world we live in to the point where when we don’t see automatic results in such a short amount of time from what we are doing, we lose interest or the drive to complete something that once moved us to begin in the first place.

I can raise my hand to that and say that I have experienced that many times in my life so far. When I find myself going through that, I have to remind myself why I started this career or journey and that deep down in my heart, my soul that this is exactly what I want to do. It will be challenging, exhausting. But to me that makes it all worth it.

Plant as many seeds as you can and over time, with persistence and consistency, those seeds will grow and bloom into a plentiful harvest that will reward you for all the effort put in. Just stick with it and it will all pay off. I promise.

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?

At my core resides a die hard filmmaker. The process of creating TV and movies has always had a huge influence on making the decision to work in the industry. Just the thought of being able to capture a three dimensional world and project it to a two dimensional screen, forever immortalizing that image simply amazes me!

The first time filmmaking caught my eye was in high school during a video production class. I, along with others, we were tasked with creating music videos, mini docs, and other various video projects and let me tell you, it was very challenging but fun at the same time. From there, I made up my mind to pursue this, however I could. In junior college, I started a film club to not my help myself learn but others as well who shared a similar passion for filmmaking.

I continued my education for filmmaking until 2016, where I moved to Atlanta, GA to focus on cinematography and building my network. The move was not easy. I moved 7 times in two years, became homeless for six months before I really took consistency and persistence seriously. It is 2022 now and the seeds that I planted since 2016 are finally paying off.

Today, I own my own video production company (Keylite Media) where we produce our own content as well as provide production and post pro

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

What I think helped me build my reputation within my market/industry is patience, having an open mind, and a positive attitude. The film industry is a go go go industry. Things need to be done yesterday. It’s very fast paced and everyone is on a different experience level than you whether that’s more experienced or less experienced. If they are less, patience is key. If they are more experienced than you, having an open mind is key. I say all of this because I have been in a situation where I was the less experienced person on a job and had to have an open mind to learn and a situation where I was the more experienced person on a job and had to practice patience with others who were less experienced than I.

Above both of these is attitude. It’s funny how universal attitude is and how vital it is to making a name for yourself. It’s something we can sense even before someone speaks. You’ve probably experienced what I am talking about. You walk into a room and someone is there and something feels off about them or draws you to this person? It’s most likely attitude. It’s everything and really can make or break you.

I strongly believe the reason why I get more references from other people for work is because I have put a positive focus on my patience, my open mind, and my attitude. These pillars of my reputation have proved to me time and time again how truly important they are and require constant tuning to grow both personally and professionally.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

When I first moved to Atlanta, GA I didn’t have a side hustle in place. I was really into photography when I first arrived so shortly after getting a job to keep a roof over my head, I started pushing my photography services. I captured multiple weddings, portraits, engagements, and other opportunities. As time went on, my desire for video production/filmmaking grew and one day decided to quit my steady job and make the jump and turn my side hustle into a full time opportunity and haven’t looked back since.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.keylitemedia.com
• Instagram: @Davidvelick; @keylitemedia