Tell to Win Contest

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Tell to win_Small

It was nice to meet you. Last week, we went to Anaheim, California (It was Allea’s first time to the West Coast. She was pretty jazzed.), and set up an exhibitor booth at the Christian Leadership Alliance annual leadership conference. We met so many new people, learned about dozens of organizations and businesses, and were able to chat with people doing great work all across the globe! It’s amazing, really, all of the creative ways people are working to make great things happen. As people who work in video production, we are genuinely interested in your organization’s cause. Your unmistakable [...] Read more »

Hi, I’m Allea. And yes, I’m new.

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allea_grummert

After five years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I finally graduated in May 2012 (Yippee!). For the record, my fifth year was really a “bonus year,” since I decided a semester before my expected graduation to add a second major and study abroad. In August 2011, with two majors in advertising and history, one large suitcase, a taste for adventure, and zero-to-no foreign language experience in tow, I boarded a big airplane and headed east. Bound to study history and British culture, I found my way to Kingston, a borough of London. Studying during the week and traveling on the [...] Read more »

Hollywood and the Nonprofit Cinematographer Merge

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Man Photographing Himself

Have you seen “Act of Valor,” the 2012 feature film starring a cast of real Navy SEALs? The interesting thing about this movie is that it was the first feature film to be shot primarily with a DSLR camera. A typical digital cinema camera used in Hollywood today starts at about $90,000. But the DSLR (the Canon 5D Mark II) used in “Act of Valor” can be purchased from Best Buy for less than $2,000. As a video professional, I can actually see a big difference between a $90,000 cinema camera and a DSLR. I’m not even all that excited [...] Read more »

Paul and Kristin Published in AdVents Magazine

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A clip of Paul and Kristin's article

We have grown a lot in our skills over the last couple of years. But there is one particular skill set that seems to be rising above the rest. We have become so passionate about perfecting our interviewing skills. As a result, we have been able to help our clients connect with their audiences with more depth than before. I (Mike), personally, had the recent privilege of watching Kristin take several university professors to a place where they felt safe enough to shed their tears during an interview. But getting people to that place takes a lot of intentionality. Now [...] Read more »

Trip to Nepal

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IMG_7271

A few words to describe the contrasts of Nepal: Wonderful, chaotic, lively, inviting, beautiful and completely impoverished. I think my brain and emotions were on overdrive the whole two weeks Reliant spent capturing video for Tiny Hands International. Tiny Hands is an organization that works to fight poverty and social injustice. In our case, it means that we spent our time telling the stories of orphans who live in their children’s homes and girls who have been intercepted from human trafficking. We also saw kids living in the streets and begging for food everywhere. While we were at the border, [...] Read more »

Peeking into the Soul: 10 Interviewing Techniques for Engaging and Authentic Videos

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Mask

As President of Reliant Studios, part of my job is to extract the nuances of life that make for compelling stories for the dozens of videos that we produce every year. However, nuances rarely come easy. Most people won’t sit down and bear it all. You have to work for it. I’ve learned in my role here, and from my background as a professional therapist, that there are certain strategies that can transport people to a place where they feel safe enough to give you a peek into their soul. This peek is the difference between a lifeless “talking head” [...] Read more »