We recently connected with Hermest Benoit and have shared our conversation below.

Hermest, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

This question is difficult for me to answer. I think of risk as a function of the universe, unfortunately, risk in the human experience is deemed dangerous. But from a first principle perspective, all you are really doing is initiating a process. No real danger is associated with your risk-taking decisions. Think about it this way, do the cells in your body think about the risk associated with creating newer cells? No, of course not. It is simply just a task to complete in order to reach a larger outcome. People who fear taking risks just don’t have a clear understanding of what they value in life. So my biggest “risk” as of late, was answering the question this way.

Hermest, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a soon-to-be 21-year-old director from Broward County Florida. I am the lead director and founder of OPAH. From an early age, OPAH was an alter ego I adopted through Xbox live gaming. Later on, supported by my love for film and photography. I started a youtube channel with the same name and created cinematic lifestyle videos concurrent with the 2015- 2017 vlogger era on youtube.

I have always had an attraction to visually pleasing images, objects, and moments in everyday life. Through a camera, I had a revelation that seems to go unnoticed by the majority of the world. We have the early stages of time travel technology thanks to the invention of the motion-capturing camera. Since that became a truth for me I have been focused on building on that thesis.

It was the year of the pandemic that I decided to take a side hobby and turn it into a business, I combined my love for technology and creative arts to create OPAH. OPAH is an entertainment technology company that at the moment specializes in servicing selected clients in completing visual products. We are an enigma because while we are helping clients and creatives solve the problems that they come to us for, we are also creating solutions to the problems clients and creatives will face in the future.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

So, recently I released my passion project FIELDS. The project was sponsored by OPAH and was in conjunction with Congruent Space. Congruent Space is a concept store that integrates art and fashion based out of Chicago. I was introduced to the owners by Angela Larsen, owner of vagabondbyang. I shared with them my idea and they were on board. In the end, I created what felt like a visual representation of the effects that come from spreading ideas and what that does to humans as individuals and as a whole.

I want to thank everyone who was involved in the making and completion of the project. Thank you to congruent space for allowing me to represent their company through my work. Thank you to the models, Tyrone, Jallisa, and Nat, and to the stylist Gideon. And a huge thank you to the production team, Lutino(AD) Juvair(PM) Brizzy(PA/VHS) Marc(PA). Everyone did exactly what was needed to make this project what I envisioned, and I am forever grateful for that.

This project had difficulties that presented a test of my resilience. One notable and funny one was while filming I stepped into a hill of red ants and got bites that made my ankles swell up twice their size. I thankfully was given some vaseline and continued to film until the final shot. The second test came in post, I spent almost 2 months trying to get the right look down when it came to the editing and color grading. I became frustrated and felt a creative block. I decided to just let the ideas come to me and through that, I was able to find the style I was looking for.

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

I think the most effective thing for us has been our ability to see what is coming next. Many people fall victim to keeping up with the trends but have little idea of what direction their core values are in. Things are always going to change, people are always going to want the latest thing.

What keeps a list of growing clientele is understanding the science of your art. What are the fundamental rules of your business and have they remained consistent regardless of what’s popular. When someone comes to you with an idea that they want to be executed, you already beat them to the punch by understanding the fundamental truth of what they are asking for.

These things don’t change unless a radically new technology is invented and at the moment we are not in an era of innovation but just improving on the things we are already good at. Pay attention to society on a macro level and study how that affects the people you have already worked with and plan on working with. We are all customers to someone. Learn more about yourselves and what you love, and in turn, you will learn more about your clientele.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/opahco
• Twitter: twitter.com/opahco
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/OPAHviewing