We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ian Hunter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ian, appreciate you joining us today. 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?
The journey from making a passion into a profession doesn’t happen over night. At least, for me it didn’t. There’s a certain fundamental shift that must take place in order to practice your art or craft in a way that can hit deadlines and expectations. The goal is to commodify a skill set and sell those skills to a client. You lose a certain spontaneity and organic connection to your work and craft as your work starts creating you as opposed to you creating the art. It’s a kin to being a surrogate mother in a way. You may spend months working on a project and pour your whole self into it but at the end of it all, you truly have no ownership over it. Having monetized a process that was intended to be sacred. You truly must sacrifice that part of your soul in order to achieve a space where you can earn a living from your art. Work doesn’t stop being work just because you’re making art. Everything is fun when it’s just a hobby, but work will always be work.
Ian, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
For those who don’t know, I am a professional sound mixer for film, television, comercial, and new media. My company Beehive Audio has worked with clients such as Guinness, Ford, Spotify, Schoolastic, and BBC Story Works just to name a few. We’ve had the opportunity to work with actors such as John Leguizamo, Robert Smigel, and Luis Guzmán. Our goal is to create, record, and produce sound for video that sinks into peoples eardrums and transports them to a land before time; touching their curiosity, wonder and emotions. Taping into people’s most primal sense which is most closely associated with sensory emotions, we are able to create a sense of fear, drama, action, or peace using the precision and science that modern technology allows. Whether it be a feature film, comercial, video, or short; we handle the part of cinema that isn’t scene but felt. Helping connect the human experience to the experience of humans. We started from humble beginnings with just a mixer and a microphone and have doubled our revenue every year since we began. Acquiring better and stronger equipment, the names and films get bigger but the core techniques stay the same. As long as you give audio its due respect, great sound can be achieved with just disciple and dedication to the craft. It’s about controlling half of the senses we have at our disposal as film makers to tell a story and transport them to a different world.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
The best source for new clients has always been word of mouth recommendations. Word of mouth has an extra layer of trust built in since a personal recommendation is built into the process. A lot of trust is required when hiring a someone for sound on a film. It has the power to make or break a movie and can derail a production if given the opportunity. Much like a gang, someone inside must vouch for you before you can be trusted.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
The barrier to entry with creating a business can be initial capital. I found that the capital required to buy equipment or marketing or hire can be scaled down based on how much initial capital is available but the greater cost is the price of living without income. You can expect to make no money in the beginning of you buisness and the more you invest initially the longer you can expect to be in the red. The sooner your business can become cash positive the sooner you can reinvest in your business and have organic growth based on demand. If you find you’re struggling to make money, more money invested is usually not always the answer. Rather it means you are not fulfilling a need in the market place. Reassess your strategy and reinvest money in the right places.
Contact Info:
- Website: Beehiveaudio.com
- Instagram: @beehiveaudio