We were lucky to catch up with Vy Nguyen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Vy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

It takes a curious mind and a humble outlook on education and growth to be successful. You really can’t rely on being the smartest or the best at what you do to be successful in any industry. You have to be a good person that can relate to others, be open to new ideas, and to learn new ways to do things from other people. Now — you don’t necessarily have to adopt new ways of thinking, but you should always question why others are doing something a different way. Is it better? is it less effective? That’s for you to experiment and learn. I believe that being successful is a goal that isn’t achievable in our lifetime, but that constant struggle towards success is what keeps us going. At the end of the day, you can look back on your successes and failures and be happy at what you’ve achieved and the people that you’ve met along the way to help you.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I studied broadcast & media in college and worked while I was in school as a videographer for a car dealership. After I graduated, I transitioned into the dealership’s in-house marketing agency as lead video producer where I worked on bigger projects for both the dealership and other local and regional brands. Eventually, I got burned out from low budgets and creative constraints and so I decided to go freelance as a video producer. I started off doing a lot of one-man band type of video jobs, but then more and more doors opened in the industry to me working on bigger crews and that gave me the opportunity to learn where I fit in the bigger world of video production. From the start, I branded my video production business as Vy Nguyen Films – my first and last name, but I knew that eventually when I could scale up and bring on my own team, that would change. After 4-5 years of working and growing my small video production business, I found a great business partner and cinematographer, Ethan, who helped me rebrand and re jump-start my business, and we named together as Orange Video. As a full service video production company based in Florida, Orange Video provides video concepts /scripting to production, and post production and final delivery. Our goal is to make video easy for clients and our processes make it as hands off or hands on as our clients or marketing agencies desire. Our team of 4 can scale production up or down depending on scope of work and budget, building crews as large as 30 people or scaling back down to travel teams of 2. We’ve worked on marketing and tourism videos for our state, national television commercials for lawyers, and social media campaigns with well known brands such as Barefoot wine. At the heart of what we do is finding ways to cinematically tell a story and have fun doing it with our crew and clients.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Nearly 7 years ago, Ethan Caswell, my business partner and best friend today, texted me through a mutual friend and asked me to have lunch with him to talk about video production and general opportunities available for work. He was a freelance wedding videographer, and I was a freelance commercial videographer, trying to transition into the video producer role. Ethan recently left a stable job as production assistant / assistant editor at a commercial video production company to find a way to work alongside his wife in the wedding filmmaking business. At our lunch, he asked about opportunities to work as a videographer to pad his wedding filmmaking business that were mostly on weekends. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was a bit nervous about making ends meet with only wedding filmmaking at the time, and so he was being proactive in finding work in case it didn’t work out.

A few weeks later, I pitched on my first larger scale job for a small college university that involved 2 weeks of production with a micro crew. Production included filming interviews and b-roll to promote over 15 off their academic programs. I got the job, and at first I was over the moon, but then it quickly sunk in that I could not do this project by myself. I needed to be able to produce this logistically heavy production that included over 50 interviews, 50 set ups on campus, 10 off campus and hour by hour scheduled days. I gave Ethan a call, asked him to be my cinematographer, he said yes, and we were off to the races. On that first production together, we found that we complimented each other’s skill sets. Ethan is a very technical cinematographer, able to light beautifully on a tight timeline, while I was able to put the schedule, line up interviews, and do blocking with talent for b-roll.

That 2-week production solidified our working relationship, and since that shoot, I decided that Ethan would be the go-to cinematographer for my projects because he gave me the confidence to be hands off on the image, and allow me to focus on story, client relationships, and everything else going on set. For years, we worked together and around each other’s busy schedules. He was still growing his wedding filmmaking business, and I was growing a video production business. His weekends were set aside for his business, but his weeks were somewhat free between his wedding film editing schedule. It was during the weeks that we could work with each other, and I made a large effort to make sure to only schedule video projects when he was free.

Some years went by as we did this little dance of scheduling and availability, and it was after a long day of shooting that I pitched Ethan the idea of building a production company together one day. At the time, his wedding filmmaking business with his wife was doing really well, but our commercial video production company was also growing very fast. Ethan stayed true to his wedding filmmaking business, but told me that he would consider it in the future if him and his wife decided to ever slow down. A few years after that conversation, Ethan and his wife was expecting their first child together and they decided to slow down their wedding filmmaking business because of the weekend commitments and busy schedules / deadlines. Ethan told me he was ready to move into the commercial video production space, and he started to work even more as a cinematographer for me.

In 2023, Vy Nguyen Films (my production company) was rebranded to Orange Video and Ethan because a full time partner. We opened up an office in Tallahassee, FL and have since worked on large scale productions together, continuing that seamless partnership that we’ve had from the start. Where I lack, he makes up for. He’s a great person to know because he always finds a solutions to problems and I know that our company is successful because he is a part of the equation. Outside of work, our families hang out, me and him are pickleball partners, and he’s slowly teaching me how to woodwork. We’re business partners but also friends, and that’s the difference maker.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Going freelance was one of the scariest times in my life. I was leaving my first real job after college, working at a marketing agency as a video producer. I wanted to leave because I felt like I was burning out and the creative constraints were getting tighter and tighter. At that full time job, I produced videos, either by myself or with a small shoestring crew. I was very hands on with the technical side of things, but never the financial or business side of things. Going freelance meant that I had to learn how to do that myself. I had to not only be creative, but also business develop, find jobs, and to manage projects with clients.

After I went freelance, I quickly found out that I enjoyed the business side of creative even more than the technical side of things. Early on in my career, I was caught up in idea of better cameras, better gear, and crafting good looking cinematic visuals on camera, but once I was able to see the other side of filmmaking, I found that I really enjoyed it. The other side of filmmaking is pitching concepts to clients or agencies, hiring and managing crew, figuring out logistical problems surround video production, and seeing projects through from start to finish with the required approvals from clients.

I pivoted from trying to be a videographer, scraping by with wedding films or event coverage jobs (usually lower paying jobs) to starting and owning a video production company where we can really take a more proactive approach to our work instead of doing reactive work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.orangevideo.co
• Instagram: orangevideo.co