In theory, this trip started nine months ago. November 2014 was the first time in a really long time that every single member of our company was in the same place at the same time for any extended period. We had a lot of really excellent conversations. We talked about the lean start of our company five years ago, where we are today, and where we want to go. The result was a conversation about our brand.
For years now, you’ve known us as the video company that tells stories. That’s what we do. We’re good at it and we’re really passionate about it. Those two things rarely come packaged together anymore. What we realized, though, is that for decades the sales pitch has been, “Hire us, we have the best gear—we shoot in HD!” Or something like that . . . . Today, cell phones can shoot 4K video. Long gone are those days where equipment set professionals and amateurs apart. Today, it’s skill set. It’s service. It’s having the ability and willpower to work with a client to make sure that they walk away from the table happy. All of those things are our company. Everyone that works for our company has that in their hearts. It’s a pretty special thing.
So we started looking at ourselves. Anyone that’s ever done this knows how rewarding (read: painful) this process can be. You learn a lot of good things, but also some bad. That’s when we realized that we are a very different company now than when we started. I think we all knew we needed to rebrand at that moment.
I’ll skip a bunch of really annoying months where we floundered with trying to find a new logo, but just know that this paragraph represents that. Feel my pain?
Finally, one week ago . . . After checking $300 worth of equipment (You’re welcome, JetBlue) I boarded a flight to Seattle where I would meet up with my brothers in New Sky. It was exciting to get on the plane. Even though I’ve been traveling for work a lot lately, this time felt different.
You know how this goes. We drank beer, ate tacos, caught up . . . I danced to some really obscure 90s music after subsequently over consuming said beers and went to sleep. The next day our adventure began.
Monday morning arrived. We loaded down Matt and John’s cars with equipment and headed east toward the Cascades. Twenty minutes past a town called Leavenworth, we found our cabin—our basecamp for the week. What came next is a little weird, but when you make videos for a living, you understand why we did it. We took all of the gear out of the car and sat on it in the yard so that we could take pictures with it.
It had started. We all gathered around the dining room table and discussed what we wanted to do that week. Not that we hadn’t already discussed it, but when you spend your days working on other people’s videos and, finally, you get the chance to make your own, you get pretty stoked and want to talk about it.
But first, a hot tub.
Right around the time we began discussing our plans, the rain began. I realized then that we were in the Pacific Northwest—no shit it was raining.
For the next three days it rained. And rained. And rained. What was it doing back home in New Hampshire? Sunny and 79°. Way to think this one through, Morris.
There’s something to be said for solitude, to be totally alone, to hear the whispers of the wind and the rush of water. Everywhere we go there are stories. Sometimes you just have to be quiet enough and patient enough to hear them. That’s what we do. We’re quiet and patient and we listen to you. Even if you don’t think you have a story, you do. Let us help you find it.
New Sky Productions
stories. everywhere.
This is our new tagline. It sums up everything that we are about to a cellular level.