Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle and Jared Zacharias.
Danielle and Jared, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Our business story begins where our relationship story begins. When we first began dating in 2007, we started dreaming about how we could fuse our passions with work. We both had grown up with photo and video hobbies, which then transitioned into odd jobs, and finally into us wondering if we could create something full-time together.
We started filming weddings while we were engaged in 2007 and shortly thereafter had our first website up. It was a little intimidating (and also exciting) to create our own business as we started building our life together but we dreamed of being parents and working from home. Being able to live out that dream has been incredible. We still love what we do after 10 years!
Over the years, we have filmed hundreds of weddings. We are romantics at heart and we love hearing that our couples are watching their wedding videos year after year and it’s so cool watching their families grow. We love being able to create something unique and special for each couple.
As our business has grown we have grown and expanded into filming corporate, business, promotional videos. I think our passion for telling stories naturally progressed to wanting to tell business stories as well. People work so hard building their dreams (we know first hand), it’s really neat to be able to create video content for their websites that show people who they are as a business and what drives them. If you have a story, it needs to be told!
For us personally, we love to travel and take ridiculous amounts of photos and videos of course. We love checking out new places in San Diego to eat or walk. Jared likes to play video games in his spare time and I love to garden or DIY something fun. We have two kids, a dog, cats and chickens and also love coffee and gelato!
Has it been a smooth road?
Probably the toughest thing for us has been the business side of things. The creative side of the business has always been the easier aspect for us. On the other hand, learning all the ins and outs of creating a business with taxes and insurance and paperwork etc was something we just didn’t know much about.
Whether it’s the legality of using licensed music or getting FAA certified for piloting a drone, we’ve spent lots of time and effort educating ourselves on these topics behind the scenes for all of our clients.
Early on in our career we met a lot of other wedding entrepreneurs and having that community has helped a lot. I feel like we struggle with the same things as a lot of creatives and so we all kind of help each other out. But overall, we have really enjoyed the road we’ve been on!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are a husband and wife team. I know that doesn’t exactly set us apart, but I think what’s neat is that we both were passionate about this before we even knew each other.
So we drive each other to learn more and grow in our business. We also LOVE working together and we have been in this for so long that we really have a groove. Jared has his strengths and weaknesses that compliment my strengths and weaknesses so that we are really a great team. This definitely helps us to be a well-rounded business.
I think people really like to work with us because we are consistent and dependable. We are proud of being able to deliver quality work at competitive prices because we work together. Our main goal is being able to tell each couple’s or business’ story in a unique way that really helps them shine.
And we really enjoy doing just that! We got into wedding videography because when we were getting married we had a difficult time finding a good videographer that would tell our story about our wedding. So we wanted to push ourselves in our business to not just make a music video, but rather tell the unique story of the couple that we are filming.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Our city is a wonderful place! We might be biased because we were both born and raised here, but because of the weather and amount of weddings and businesses, there is a lot of work here. Because there is a lot of work, there are also a lot of people who start businesses so there is a lot of competition in the photo/video world.
And going along with that, there are a lot of people who don’t have a passion for it, but just want to make a quick buck and don’t care about the legal parts of our business or put in the effort. That gets frustrating sometimes, but everyone starts somewhere. We still absolutely love working in San Diego and it’s a phenomenal backdrop for videography!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sidebysidecinema.com
- Phone: (760) 500-3264
- Email: info@sidebysidecinema.com
Image Credit:
Betsy McCue, True Photography, Kristina Davini
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
