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G'day guys and welcome to this episode 368 of the How to Scale a Video Business podcast. And today it's all about a big announcement that after three decades in the video industry, I'm giving away all of my previous training around video production. Now forgive the pugs in the back of shot. They are not in the back of shot, the back of sound. You probably hear them snorting away. It's witching hour here, so I thought I'd just record this podcast anyway. So over the last few weeks, I made a decision that I would release all of my back catalog on all of the shoot and lighting training that I've ever produced. I've had many requests over the years, and so I literally sat and I uploaded them all and relabeled them all. to YouTube. So I now have what I'm calling the Videographer Foundation Series, one through five on YouTube, covering a whole raft of different things. Now, if you're an established videographer, then you may know all this stuff already, but I know myself, I always love learning from others. And these are some of the fundamentals that I think are missing in the modern videographer world. Things that I learned over, you know, three or four years working as a camera operator for broadcast television, learning from places like BBC and learning from very experienced filmmakers and DPs. So let me walk you through what they are. So first of all, we've got series one, shoot to edit scene coverage and sequence building for videographers. Now, this is something that I think is massively missing from modern education. Many younger videographers kind of want the answers. They'll throw a camera on a gimbal and just wave it around and, you know, try and cover a scene. But many of them don't understand why and what elements are required to block a scene correctly. And I hired a videographer last year to cover one of our events, and he had a really nice camera package, FX6 camera package, all the bells and whistles. prime lenses, this, that, the next thing, very NDs. And, but, but he couldn't cover a scene. He didn't know why he was doing what he was doing. And so this series of, I think there's, there's probably 20 plus videos here cover everything from framing, lens choice, composition, moving the camera, you know, things like One of the exercises is me standing in one position, looking to cover as many shots as possible in 10 minutes. So it's really about framing, composition, how to shoot sequences. And for a lot of it, I had a GoPro attached to the cameras. You could see physically where I was standing, what I was doing, walking and talking you through every single shot. So that's the first one. And really it's about, you know, shooting b-roll that your editor can cut together so you don't overshoot, but you tell better stories and you understand why you're doing them. The second videography foundation that I've released is lighting for real world shoots. This was originally called lighting interview lighting, but really it's about location lighting with a small compact lighting kit to create interesting and unusual lighting setups when you're working very, very quickly. And again, I think there's 15 or 16 videos in this one. And it covers everything over, everything from, you know, just simple talking heads, lighting two people, lighting with two cameras, lighting two people with two cameras, and doing it quickly. So again, a lot of this was learned in my days as a location cameraman working in London. We did a lot of celebrity interviews. lighting in a boring room, or if you're in a hotel room or a small space that's not very interesting, or lighting in a boring boardroom. Now granted, these trainings are in some cases 8, 10, 12, 15 years old in some cases, but the principles remain. So if you're looking for a really good archive of base training, then, or maybe you know a young filmmaker, or you have a young filmmaker on your crew who you're trying to train, then these will really do a great job. of doing that. The Videographer Foundation Series 3 is what I'm calling easy cinematic location lighting when solo shooting. Now, I used to call this advanced video lighting, and that was really, it's an ode to or a nod to when I was a freelance location cameraman. It had my lighting kit, it's what I could fit in the back of the car, and it's really me showing you how I created all the different looks and the tool set everything from recreating that white apple style cinema look to lighting interviews against windows or how to control light and shadow in a white room, how to turn off white wall black when lighting, high contrast interviews, adding texture and depth with props. So again, but albeit a few years old, but it's still a fundamentally strong training series to help you really polish up some of your skills, look over my shoulder to see how I do things. And then we move into a couple of camera trainings that have been requested many, many times. And I guess this whole series came off the back of, I had a video up called Recording Clean Audio with a Canon 5D Mark III, and I put that up about 12 years ago, and it's had 148,000 views, and I just suddenly realized that all this other stuff was sitting on my hard drive. So we've got the foundation series four, which is mastering the Canon 5D Mark III for video production. So if you know any Canon shooters who have that camera, again, it's going to be a really helpful series. And then finally, we've got the videographer foundations series five, which is the black magic cinema camera training. Now, granted, this camera goes back a while, but again, myself and James Tonkin from Hangaround Studios. walk through everything from lens choice, powering, framing, mounting, exposing in the real world, and we're on location, we're in a studio, different lens tests. Again, a very comprehensive set of training there. So it's all on my YouTube channel, just search Dan Lenné on YouTube or Dan Lenné, the Video Mentors, and you'll find it or Video Business Accelerator, all of those things will find us. And check them out. You know, as I say, we used to charge a lot of money for this training, and we've given the entire back catalog away for free on YouTube. Now, the other thing I wanted to just share with you today is we've been very busy in the background, and we're updating our entire VBA operating system, which is what we call our ecosystem for building and helping build video businesses. to high six figures. And what we've decided to do as we are streamlining what we're offering and how we're offering it, we've decided to do something that we've never really done before. And that is offer a part scholarship if you live in a regional area where we don't already have a member who's installing this operating system in their business. So, the way this works is if you qualify, we're going to give you a $2,000 US saving off the full.

Price.

Of the VBA up level program. And that's a significant saving that will help you if you're perhaps doing it tough right now, perhaps things aren't going quite as well as you might have hoped. And, you know, you're finding business a bit challenging. So what we're doing is we're just looking to support five filmmakers with our part scholarship offer. Now, let me just explain a little bit about what the VBA is. A few people have been confused. So I'm Dan Lenny, obviously. I've been doing this for 30 years. I've been running the F Stop Academy, which is the company since 2009. And, you know, we've, we've had a few different iterations over the years, but I've decided that it's time for me to not be front and center. And so we brought Caleb and Matt in, who you will have heard on this podcast as coaches into the VBA. And so we've created a company called the Video Mentors. And the Video Mentors are really an umbrella for future development of coaching products and the ecosystem which sits underneath that, which is all under the video business accelerator. engine. Within the Video Business Accelerator, we have three levels. We have up level, we have the ascend level, which is a new level, and then we have the elite Mastermind. And really, it's designed to help you, depending on where you are at on your journey. And so really what's important here is that there's something for everyone. And, you know, really up level is for solo filmmakers who are ready to stop. relying on referrals and build predictable revenue and learn to run a business correctly. The VBA Ascend is for a growing business who's got some clients and they're preparing to scale with systems and strategy. And then VBA Elite is when you're an established business looking for a high touch point strategy, connection and peer to peer mastermind. So we've got our three elements. So as I say, I founded the Video Mentors, which is coaching brand and the Video Business Accelerator is the engine inside it with three levels within that. And so what we're doing is we are really looking to help those people who are struggling just now. I think we've got five scholarships on offer. So if you've got a few decent clients, you're doing solid work, but you feel like you're stuck doing everything yourself and deep down, you know it's time to step up and play a bigger game. you know you don't need more gear, you don't need to grind harder. What you need is structure systems and a scalable offer that removes you as the bottleneck. And so we call that our VBA operating system. And what that's going to do is it's going to plug you into an ecosystem which is supported with weekly live group coaching, with a strategic 90-day sprint plan, a quarterly peer mastermind, which is online, it's virtual. We did one yesterday, it was three and a half hours, phenomenally successful. Full access to the Video MBA training vault, which includes done for you proposal templates that have generated in excess of $1.3 million for Caleb's business. You also get two SOS support calls a year, one on one when you've got an emergency, and a highly engaged global community of creative business owners. So if that's something that sounds like, you know, would work for you and you're keen to learn more, then I will make sure either connect with me somewhere on Instagram@denlenny or send me an email at den@thevideomentors.com and I'll send you the link to the application page for the scholarship. Now we're not going to run this scholarship beyond five members because where we're discounting quite significantly. But the reason for that is we believe if we can help you, if you're sitting there just now who just can't quite find the funds to join the full VBA, we're going to offer this scholarship to help you get started. Because we believe if we help you get started and you have success, then you will want to stay with us and do more and ascend through our ecosystem. I'm going to ring off now because the dogs are ready for a walk and as you can hear, they're barking. in the background. But in the meantime, any questions, drop me a line on Instagram. And I look forward to talking to you again next week.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Den Lennie. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www. www.video-business-accelerator.com to learn more about how the Accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on iTunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.