Ode to Your Mother

It's going to be my very first Mother's Day this year. So, "Happy early Mother's Day!" to all you mothers out there.

You are to be admired. Really. The patience you have is outstanding, and the wisdom to know when that patience has reached its limit is a kind of wisdom reserved for Solomon himself.

I've been distracted thinking about my own mom as May 12th gets ready to make its appearance. Mom is exactly who I want to be when I grow up: independent, hard-working, street smart, numbers smart, lioness. I became very grateful, even for the strict curfews and making me speak for myself. All this retrospective thinking about my own mom hatched a fresh idea last night.

I want to sit down with one of you young mothers to talk about your own mom. We'll create a short video message you can share with her for Mother's Day. There's a twist in the plot, sure to pull at her heartstrings, but that's a secret kept between you and me for now. I'll let you know what it is when we talk more about your short film.



Interested? Here's all you have to do:
1. Comment below about the most important thing you've learned from your mom now that you're a mother yourself
2. Be willing to visit with me to film for an hour (I'll travel up to 3.5 hours outside of Columbus, Ohio).
3. Be a mom of a child 3-years old or younger (if you have more than one child, the others can be older but the youngest must be 3 or younger)
4. Be available to have me visit sometime during the dates of May 3rd-May 9th
5. Be willing to let me share your touching ode online

Submissions will be accepted until 11:59pm EDT Sunday, April 28th, 2013.
Only one entry per person. Email address will not be shared and must be included in order to contact you if you win. Winner will be selected and contacted April 29th.


I'd appreciate you sharing/recommending this "contest" with and to as many mothers you know and hopping on over to "Like" me on Facebook so you can see the final story when it's released. Here's a cute family story to prime the pump for sharing your mother memories.

Unity Ceremony: A Guest Experience

Your wedding day is here! Like my friend Todd tells his couples, it's like a train ride at this point. All you have to do is hop on and go for the ride. Here's a quick tip to help you enjoy that ride even more.

It's time for you both to go up and light your candle, pour your sand, plant your tree, box your bottle of wine...in other words, to declare that the two of you are one, now and forever. What you may not think about is whether or not you want everyone else to view this unity ceremony.

Damian, of United Marriage Services, has a great suggestion for couples in sharing this moment with your guests, your photographer and your videographer. Watch the clip above to hear his thoughts.

I listed a few different unity ceremony ideas I've seen in my day. What kinds of things have you seen or are you considering? What do you think of Damian's advice; would you rather that moment be public or private?

Follow more of my work: facebook.com/lzeidner

Featurette: Matt and Emily

[Matt and Emily's wedding was filmed in conjunction with Todd Seimer Photography]

One day, Mr. Noodle walked his charming lady to the park bench. He dropped to one knee and reached into his pocket to retrieve a small box, or so she thought. Instead, he pulled out a treat for his lady's faithful pooch, Milo. Mr. Noodle was always playing. He did ask for the lady's hand in marriage and both she and the pooch agreed they would all make a fine family.

That's how I imagine it in my mind anyway. The bench part is true, the rest is pure fiction. Matt is as quirky as Emily is sweet. Their favorite pose as you'll see in their Featurette, is called "Double Trouble". You also know it's going to be a fun and relaxed wedding when the biggest worry is whether or not Matt would wear his new, large orange sunglasses during their ceremony.

I'll let their Featurette do the rest of the talking for me. I also want to thank Austin Craig for permission to use one of his songs. He's a local Ohio native now living in Texas and worth taking a listen to. I'm always on the lookout for local Ohio musicians to feature in my trailers, so please get in touch if you're interested or know someone who would be.

Enjoy a few stills from Matt and Emily's trailer:

Yarn and Yuengling: Kyle and Mikaila Expecting

Kyle and Mikaila are into good music and good beer (for the record, "Yuengling" was the only "Y"-named beer I could think of). So we took their maternity photos doing what they love. Irony is another thing they enjoy. Like how Mikaila wanted to don the typical housewife look while pregnant at a bar. And you should have seen their tug-of-war over the "Wham!" album! I had so much fun during our shoot and you'll have to agree that this is different than any maternity photos you've seen before.

Baby is due in a few short weeks and I can't wait to meet the little guy! Your mom and dad are so excited to meet you and introduce you to all the pups waiting for you at home.

1 Year New: The Bad and the Ugly

If you want to question everything you've ever done, become your own boss.

Reaching my 1-year anniversary as a full-time freelance videographer has me thinking a lot about this past year. I shared some of the good things I love about it, but I need a whole post dedicated to all the hard lessons I've learned. Take a deep breath because here it all comes.

The Bad and the Ugly
I question my productiveness. I was used to having a distinct schedule in the lab based on the protocol I was following. 1 hour incubation here, 15 minute centrifugation there. Easy peasy. Now my brain hurts after digging through footage for an hour straight or searching for music that I deem worthy for a solid 6 hours only to come up empty-handed. I didn't know I was doing well with 2 hours of solid editing during the day until I talked with other "creatives", as I'm called now. The rest of the day is spent building my business, accounting, networking and getting lost in other people's work. This brings me to my next point.

I question my ability. Am I good enough to make it? Am I driven enough to get through the droughts and organized enough to hunker down during the floods? I'll spend hours watching other people's work and begin to wallow in my lack of talent and lack of "likes" and "followers". I rarely doubted myself in science. If it worked, it did. If not, the lab gnomes had messed it all up. Simple as that. Even if things are working now, it's so easy to feel they aren't because there's always someone else out there doing better, being noticed more, and who seems to have it all together.

I question my decision to leave a job with a salary and benefits. I once calculated that I'm making $10/hour as a videographer. Beyond charging $5,000 per wedding or filming 30 weddings a year, it's been very hard to even approach what I previously thought was a modest Research Associate's salary (which now seems like making bank in comparison). I know there are things I can change to fix that, and I'm working on it.

I question my integrity. This is the BIG one. I was scared that I wouldn't have enough income, so I filmed 20 weddings last year. I finished editing the last one this week. It's April, people. That's a ridiculous amount of time that has passed. I've written so many "I'm sorry it's taking me so long to get your film back to you" emails that it's embarrassing. Some of my clients asked if I had forgotten about them. It was quite the opposite. I've been haunted by the pile of work mounting and stories floating around in my head. I've made promises I didn't keep and it breaks my heart. I'm being brutally honest here so you hopefully learn from my mistakes.

So what does this all mean for the future?

I still love being my own boss and I can put on my big-girl pants and make the necessary calls when needed. I've come to terms with what a good day can be (2 hours of solid editing) and how often the bad days come around (85% of the time). I know better what work load I can handle. That is why I am only working with 10 couples this year and have grand ideas for personalizing each wedding film. I am setting deadlines and announcing them to my couples so I have to be held accountable to those deadlines.

That's the glossed over version of the hard lessons I've been learning. And is it worth it? Absolutely. I love learning, remember? Like all other creatives, I hold these thoughts by Ira Glass near and dear in the dark times. What gets you through? What makes it still worth it to you? I think it's that even though there are so many questions, the big answer is that I can create. And the things I create have the ability to move people in ways nothing else can.

1 Year New: The Good

April 1, 2012
I think my boss thought it was April Fool's too.

I was a science geek and could charm the socks off almost any immortalized or stem cell. I had risen among the stars and became the lab manager, but it came to a point where there was just nowhere else to go (without starting grad school at 30). I had climbed the technician ladder for almost 8 years and found myself at the end of a high dive.

Regardless of my fear of heights, I felt the need to jump. So I made my splash and did what any rational person would do. I became a videographer. You know, because filming and editing have soooo much to do with DNA replication. I told myself if I had 20 weddings lined up to film in 2012, I would hang up my pipettors, say goodbye to the world of molecular biology and leave the worries of epigentic effects to others. I reached that goal and turned in my lab notebook a year ago today.

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"
I'll start you off with all the good. First, I love being my own boss. Who wouldn't? Especially when you're a control freak like me. I set my own hours and pick my own music. I can take time out to play with our new daughter, the refrigerator is also always close-by for those mid-morning, mid-afternoon and early evening stomach rumbles. Staff meetings are also very simple. I still have to schedule that happy hour for my office, come to think of it.

The work I do is consistently the most fulfilling work I've ever done. How could it not? As a left-handed creative that loves numbers, videography is perfect. The creative storytelling contrasted with the analytical, frame-by-frame editing. The math of camera settings compared to the art of framing a shot. My mind is on a supernova all day and night thinking through story lines for my films. These dark, creative pockets of my mind are finally being explored. The perfect marriage of art and science.

Most of my work is done alone in the home office, so I've started looking to meet people while I'm out shooting and on social network sites like Twitter and Facebook. I have met awesome people out there, even across the country. People I otherwise would have no way of meeting. They have inspired me by the work they do and by taking time to actually respond and connect with me. Makes me feel a little more professional. When I do get out of the house, I love talking to people on the sidelines of sports games, random guests at weddings who tell me stories, and especially getting to know my couples over the course of planning and staying in touch after the wedding.

I'm always learning. Like how Mom should have taught me to swim; just thrown me in the water. This learning is on the go and the the faster, the better. I learn anywhere and anything I can from print to online to people. I didn't know I would have to be my own accountant and marketing agent as well. I'm constantly learning better techniques for shooting and editing. What I love most about this work is that it's going to be a lifetime of learning. There will always be new technologies, new ways to improve, new trends.

I am so happy to have made this switch at this point. The sky is the limit (that's a lie, there are plenty of limitations, but more about that in the next post). This past year has been the most rewarding and the absolutely most difficult work year I've ever had. So that's "The Good". Funny how the draft for "...The Bad and The Ugly" is much much longer right now, but I promise I'll keep it concise.

What do you enjoy about working for yourself? Did you make the leap recently too? It took the encouragement of others in the same boat for me to make the leap and to keep my sanity after doing it. Feel free to get in touch if you want someone to bounce ideas off of for doing what you love full-time. I'm also learning that I have a lot to learn still so if you have advice for me, I'm all ears.