Hello, my name is ?

 

My name is Wes Kennison, Founder and Creative Director of version47 and coefficient, and Founder and Curriculum Lead at commercialArts.org.

I’m an active practitioner in the craft of commercial video production, and I’ve been doing this professionally for 12 years. This blog will be about meeting business needs with custom video content.

My blogging topics are as follows: 

Perspective - “Who does this does this guy think he is?”

Custom Video Automation - An industry category for your consideration, where custom video production and code collide

Process - How I approach x

Mindfulness in the Workplace - Sharing my personal growth in the least obnoxious way possible

A little bit about me, I was an International Studies major in College, graduating from LSU with a concentration in Middle Eastern Studies and a Minor in Business Administration. My goal in college was to better understand the world I grew up in, an Islamic part of West Africa, and my time at LSU was nothing short of inspiring. In college it became clear that I had one academic gift [and one only 😬 ], and that was the ability to write. My time in college sharpened my writing ability tenfold.

I fit my school schedule in around a full time job, I was running a remote team before that was a thing (2004 - 2009), and we were in the business of courthouse research. We covered 40 different judicial districts in 2 states, every single day, but that’s a different story… 

A career I was made for

My career in video production began quite intentionally, I left the research ops job with the goal of working in some avenue of video production because I felt inexplicably pulled to do so. I landed in a perfect place to put my 5 years of corporate client service and team building/operations management to work, a place called Launch Media. At the time Launch was at a crossroads, somewhat early on in it’s life as a brand, and not the Louisiana video production market leader it is today. I was blessed to have a great EP who gave me a ton of freedom to stretch my legs, and I learned the technical side of the business from the ground up. As my technical skillset and ability to adeptly respond to client needs grew, I observed that most businesses face the same challenges.

This was a crossroads for me; wherein I could either make the same video over and over again with different footage, or figure out a process that would allow me to connect more deeply with what clients really need in their business (beyond the stated objective of “we need a video”).This started me on my path to Creative Director, a title that I earned by writing for every single project. Creative Brief > Outline > Script > Storyboard and Breakdown > repeat. The moderate success I’ve achieved can be credited almost entirely to that consistency and unrelenting ownership of my response to each and every client need.

I wrote my way in, and now I'm doubling down.
This blog is going to be the place where I publish as prolifically and consistently as possible. It’s a place to hold myself accountable to giving away what I’ve learned over the years, and to impart to anyone who has 10-15 minutes to browse my writing a sense of how I may fit their needs when looking for a good fit in a video production pro.

I haven’t always been as easy to work with as I am today, and I’m grateful to every single one of the people who put up with my shit along the way, and sharpened my ability to do what I do in the process. They know who they are, and I hope that by now they know they are loved and deeply appreciated.♥

So, if you want to get to know me, read away. I recommend starting with the Custom Video Automation category. I’m not much for “regaling readers in the comments” because I believe discourse should be personal, so if you want to share some ideas, pushback, hate mail, whatever, hit me up in my inbox using the form below.

lotsa love,
wes