OUR STORY

FIT | BRAVE | GROUNDED | GLOBAL

What can we offer the world through our approach to video?

My name is Mathew Welsh and I started Journeyman Film Company after a decade in documentary filmmaking, because I believed the simple concept of the hero's journey could help organizations and companies tell better stories. A lot of people said: "you're an award winning doc filmmaker, why do corporate work?" Some folks in the TV/film business might think of corporate video work as boring - but that depends on your approach. I had success with documentary films, and I could have continued doing work for TV, but I wanted to bring a filmmaker's palette to company stories, and see where it could lead.

What is the classic hero's journey story structure? A character is faced with a daunting challenge, debates whether or not to take it on, then works through trials and tribulations to eventually succeed and arrive at a new place, a changed person. We've all seen that movie hundreds of times. Think "Rocky!" 

I wanted to bring that discipline of structure to the world of client videos. I don't like the term "corporate video." We aspire to video content that is more human than corporate. However, we create content for some huge companies, so we do corporate work; but what clients overwhelmingly love about our approach is that it doesn't feel "corporate." Organizations are made up of human beings, but it doesn't always feel that way. And all audiences respond to a human journey of transformation. That's the key.

As it turns out, the concept of the "hero's journey" is very much related to what marketers call the customer journey. And I think the hero's journey is a powerful way to move customers along that journey. Journeyman's video work enables marketing and communications teams to take their audience on the journey they need them to go on. If you're the audience, you want to follow the story of someone in similar situation or mindset, about to embark on a journey that you might take. That's powerful. That's resonance. That's a way to shift points of view and change our understanding of ideas, places, products, and organizations. 

The thing is, it's actually hard to do, and that's why not a lot of video production companies do it.

 

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  • two men sit in conversation, a Gambian man and a Canadian man
  • video production crew wrapped after filming, with on camera participant giving thumbs up
  • cameraman works with camera on mini jib crane, counterbalanced with weights, interior scene
  • film crew with camera on steady cam apparatus, with sound recordist microphone, assistant with reflector, all in safety gear, filming a worker on location
  • video production crew is ready to film interview with subject on camera, and director explains what is happening next
  • group of fish processing plant workers pose outside in their work aprons and gloves in front of fish crates

I wanted to build a production team to deliver on this idea -- I thought "maybe a team of 4 or 5 like-minded people?" And over the course of a decade it grew from 1 employee to 17 of us!!! We made so much fantastic video content over those years, and had so many personalities who worked with us, and it was a wild ride. I and other team members travelled far and wide, and met people in so many different walks of life, from Navy Divers to CEOs, to farmers to Gambian children and First Nations leaders. As I shifted away from hands-on production, to trying to lead a growing company, there were many ups and downs. I learned a lot about business and strategy and my own limitations in managing a team. I met a lot of fantastically talented creative people who brought creative ideas to the table that I never dreamed of. I know I drove a lot of employees crazy with my obsession with story structure. It led to arguments at times, about the need for story structure. After all, not every piece of video content needs it. There's is lots of content that is moving and beautiful and cool and creative, without a specific structure. Lots of video is utilitarian, or funny, or weird, and gets an audience without having a specific story structure. 

But I believe any piece of content will be elevated with the discipline of story. We had just started as a team to generate a couple of pieces that really nailed this ethos in our busiest year, 2018-2019. Then a couple of major clients pulled back on their video content needs at the same time, for unrelated political and circumstantial reasons. (What I'm saying is, their circumstances changed, it was nothing we did...!) Revenue declined. And then Covid-19 happened. So the company went through a major struggle and contracted. It was painful and challenging for me.

But through that change, I returned to work hands-on again on most of our projects. Now we're a tight collaborative group of creative freelancers who do solid work. And I get to produce and direct again, doing what I do best: building that story structure and helping real people shine.

And why do I love this work? I'll never forget some feedback I got from a Dutch Engineer named Joost. He was featured in a video project we did for the Shell joint venture project, LNG Canada. He was a reluctant participant since he hadn't been featured in video before. But took on the challenge, and he enjoyed it more than expected. And once his colleagues saw the finished video, they saw Joost in a new light. He too saw himself and his role in a new light. And his wife told him she finally had some sense of what he did at work!!! And most significantly, he told me that when all our videos where shared internally among the executive folks at Shell who had to make a decision about whether or not to invest $40 Billion in the LNG Canada project, he said people saw the project differently, in no small part, because of our videos. The videos felt different and they were human, authentic, and not a slick corporate message. Joost assured me that our work helped lead to the biggest private industry investment in Canadian history. Wow!

Video storytelling can be transformational. This is why Journeyman is focused on telling a human story. It's the main value we offer the world.