I’m Jacob, and I help brands grow with video.

I’ve always been interested in cameras. My grandparents took me on a trip to Hawaii when I was eight years old, and I don’t think she could keep enough disposable film cameras stocked for me. So, even though I’m Gen-Z, I can still technically say I started on film!

Video, however, opened up a whole new world for me. That started when I was ten years old, when I found a digital camera in my dad’s glove box (and he generously let me play with it, something that, had it not happened, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today). I’m still not exactly sure why, but I’ve found it so much more fun than stills, though I’m not knocking dedicated stills photographers — while there’s so much skillset overlap between the two disciplines, I’ve found I fit better in the video world, and my team can let the dedicated stills photographers shine in their own way.

And so making videos turned into my favorite hobby. As a young teenager there were no career ambitions in this field, but I was always bringing a video camera to every family vacation, and when school was out and we weren’t traveling, I’d make YouTube videos in my backyard.

This hobby never stopped and my obsession has only grown (even to today — there’s still so much I have to learn about this, and I’m not sure I’ll ever exhaust the creative possibilities in my lifetime). I began creating wedding films when I was 17 and did this on and off during college. Lots of mistakes were made — including, once, formatting an SD card three hours into the shoot day — and an equal amount of lessons were learned.

My work consists of helping businesses grow with video — the best communication tool in the digital age, second only to a face-to-face conversation, and it’s a way to automate the thousands of conversations a business owner would otherwise have on a daily basis with the people they’re trying to reach. Specifically, this looks like:

— Short-form social media content (TikTok, Reels, anything “vertical”)
— Long-form educational content (YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook)
— Brand films, recruitment videos, event recaps, client testimonial videos

Steed Films helps businesses grow with video. There are all kinds of videos we can make — from short-form social content, to long-form educational videos, to audio-free website backgrounds, brand films, recruitment videos, client testimonials — but what we should make depends on your business’s goals. With some clients, I work on a month-to-month basis, creating fresh material throughout the year for their branding, website, and social channels. The difference between a business that uses video and one that doesn’t is often hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in revenue.

My biggest stylistic priorities are authenticity and clarity, and I won’t make a video I wouldn’t want to watch myself. So much of what you see online these days has so many layers of fake caked on to it that you’re not even sure what this person is trying to express (if you can even recall the video from memory). So we don’t do stuff like that. Definitely don’t hire me to make a recruitment film for your company if your employees hate working for you.

In addition to lighting and audio and camera and editing skills, my job to help you find your authentic voice. So, when the cameras are rolling, don’t be surprised when I ask you to repeat the same line ten times until I can tell you felt it. There’s no faking authentic enthusiasm or passion — and it’s important to me that we get things right in-camera. There are tons of amazing machine learning-powered tools out there that can fix muddy audio, brainstorm ideas, remove noise from video, color correct, add subtitles, and even change what a person says after the fact, but it’s even better if we don’t have to use them because we cared enough to get it right from the beginning.

And when you’re showing up online, as authentically as possible for you, audiences take notice because your authenticity subconsciously compels them to pay closer attention, and you the business owner using video to grow will attract more of the exact types of people who need the good you do in the world the most.

Learn more about how I can help you: