Hey Hey Wedding Video Lovers!
It’s been a while since I wrote a progress/update blog post (sorry!), and it just came to mind this evening, so HERE WE GO….
So far this year we’ve been busy. Like really, really busy. Sue turned 30 in January (WOOHOO!) and she had 3 (yes, THREE!) birthday parties. We didn’t get a noise complaint, though we tried our hardest. To be fair Sue’s birthday falls on the 3rd of January when no one wants to party, so we were making up for a few lost years there.
We’re head down on editing still. We’re just onto October 2017 now in our queue, but we’re pumping them out at a good rate. We don’t post everything we film, so even though we might seem quite at times, we’re fulfilling wedding films every week.
We went to a wedding videographers workshop/meetup at the end of January in Athlone - self dubbed “Athloners”. The workshop side was organized by Richard Speedie of BigDay.ie, and he kindly asked yours truly to lead the topic on marketing which I was humbled to do. It was a great day and evening, and myself and Sue made tons of new videographer friends across the country. Anyone booking a wedding videographer from this group of videographers should be comforted in the knowledge that we have such a supportive community here in Ireland and we’ve all got each other’s backs. If we are not available for a wedding, I’m always happy to recommend another excellent colleague who is.
We also set up Eoin Healy Photography at the start of this year and we’ve already booked our first few weddings and clients. You can check out our engagement shoots over on https://www.instagram.com/eoinhealyphotography/. The plan is to keep Eoin Healy Photography separate from Hitched Films. As the name suggests, the idea will be that just myself will shoot most of the photography weddings and I’ll get in a second shooter when needed. Sue will continue focusing on editing the wedding films while I’m out shooting stills. But Hitched Films is still the jewel in our crown and we see this as a doubling down on our commitment to wedding life.
Having said that, we’re slowly building up Parklands Creative (don’t follow that link, there’s nothing there yet!), our parent company and our commercial/corporate video production brand. We have some commercial work already completed, and a few exciting projects in the pipeline, so it will be interesting to see how far we can take Parklands Creative in 2018. If you know of a business that needs video marketing done, please tell them to get in touch with me, we’d love to chat to them - hello@parklandscreative.com.
I’ve also been trying to insta-story a bit more. Well, trying being the operative word there! During the off-season (which is Oct/Nov and Jan-April for us), I tend to use my personal account for insta-stories, so if you don’t follow me already head over to https://www.instagram.com/healyeoin/ and click that follow button. Once the wedding season comes back around, I’ll be doing more behind the scenes stuff at wedding on the Hitched Films account - https://www.instagram.com/hitchedfilms.ie/. I know you all love a nosey!
This March we are heading to Islanders, a videographer conference which some photographers are attending. Just kidding. It’s a hybrid Photographer (Tog) and Videographer (Vog) conference in Kilkenny and we’re looking forward to catching up with wider wedding community, networking, learning, sharing and having a bit of craic. Fair deuce to our photographer friends Tomasz Kornas and Nick O'Keefe on going for such a massive undertaking. We know it’s gonna be class and I’m really looking forward to it.
What else... Oh, let’s take a quick look at the venues we’ll be filming for the first time this year:
Luttrellstown Castle, Lodge at Ashford Castle, Cloughjordan House, Dromquinna Manor, Waterford Castle, Clonabreany House & Muckross Park Hotel.
All of these venues have been on our list for a while now, so it’s great we’ll finally be able to give them the Hitched Films treatment!
It’s been a funny year for bookings. I don’t think we’re alone in saying that 2018 brides & grooms have been slow to book video this year. Up until January 2018 was a little slow, but our February was out the door for late 2018 bookings, and as of now, most of our popular 2018 date are booked. That said we’re still available for NYE 2018… but you have a hard act to follow after Laura and Chris’s 2017 NYE wedding, we can’t wait to get to edit that one. We’re open for 2019 and bookings for 2019 are going strong. Not sure when I’ll open for 2020, but sure enquire if you want ;)
Ok that’s it for now. Make sure to re-visit our Facebook page or website regularly to check for new film releases. Facebook has made some aggressive changes to its news feed algorithm against business pages recently and unfortunately the majority of our followers now aren’t getting to see our new wedding videos when they are released.
Chat soon!
Eoin
