LEAPframe is a fun-loving film and motion design company based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Watch the video and read the Q+A with co-founder Brandon Faris to find out how fun, scalability and Wipster help to make them successful.
We’re a digital film and motion design shop powered by a larger advertising agency platform (LEAP). We’ve got a whole team of people who are business savvy and knowledgeable, but we still feel like a boutique shop. We all respect each other’s trades; it’s a spirit of collaboration and creativity.
We like to say we’re built kind of like Lego. We love to approach projects with scalability in mind. Through our network, relationships, history, and experience, we can scale up or scale down, and transform into the right group for the job. If it’s a small run-and-gun production, I can team up with one or two guys, and can be quick and nimble to capture a certain aesthetic. But if we need to film in New York with a 20-man crew and 50 extras, we can do that as well. I think that scalability, that we can do whatever the job requires, makes us unique.
We try to mix it up with short films, documentaries and branded content. We don’t want to be just the corporate guys or just the music video community guys. We want to be versatile in that we’re guys that tell a story. Recently we did a music video for an emerging country artist in Nashville, Natalie Stovall and the Drive, for a song called “Mason Jar”. We had a large budget, we had 75 extras, a 20-man crew, it was a lot of fun. We’ve also done videos for Espolon Tequila and fashion brand Makerwear.
Ryan Woolfolk of LEAPframe
First and foremost, clients have to get the product they asked for. If they don’t, and their creative vision wasn’t delivered the way they expected, then it’s not a successful project. When we do deliver what the client wanted, another measure of success is the client experience. In this business anybody can get the Adobe Suite, anybody can get apps like Wipster, anybody can rent cameras. It’s a level playing field. So client experience is crucial. The LEAPframe client experience is highly personal and a ton of fun. We want people to walk away and say, “man that’s the funnest set I’ve ever been on.”
We had a problem. No one has time to come into the studio anymore. We’d send people links to Dropbox or Vimeo, they would make comments with timecodes, there would be multiple emails sent and you’d have to make a phone call. It was a clunky process, so we started looking at what’s out there and we came across Wipster. Not only does it work for us, it’s affordable, easy to use, it’s to the point, it’s secure. After a year using it, we’ve found that clients love it, it makes them feel like they’re sitting on the couch with us. It also creates accountability where everyone knows what changes were requested and fulfilled. It’s been nothing but great things from Wipster. We really like having not only the software but a company that is invested in the production community.
We’ve become way more efficient with our change orders. We deliver the rough cut, and within hours clients respond. They think it’s fun, they give us great feedback like, “that was really cool how I could just point right on the screen there and tell you exactly what I wanted to say.” Communication has become extremely efficient. Turnaround times have become very fast, and we’re now able to get from the beginning of post-production to delivery a lot faster.
We all have different hobbies. The co-founders Ryan and I are in our mid-30s with kids, so our kids are our main inspiration. We do so much fun stuff with them – play video games, explore the world, build forts, jump on the trampoline. I also love to ride motorcycles, plus I love watching films and great TV series. Ryan is inspired by nature – we say he is “one with the earth”. He’s our resident vegetarian and he loves plants.
My advice would be don’t wait around to be invited to the party. As a young filmmaker or motion designer all you have is your last project, so work, work, work. Always have a project, short film, motion design piece, a documentary idea, whatever. Execute on that project and always be producing content because that’s what leads you to your next project, and that’s what makes you better.
So there you have it, Thanks LEAPframe for sharing your story, you guys are great, and definitely not your average Cincinnati video production company.
- The Wipster Team
Wipster Content Team