Introducing New Team Members

  Spring greetings!

We have some great new content lined up to share with you throughout these upcoming months.

First things first, meet Chloe and Dan.

Chloe came to us as an intern, hungry for more knowledge and experience in the video production world. She admired our mission, having a passion both for working with nonprofits and using video and photography as mediums to tell the untold story. With a background in journalism from Colorado State University, she was eager to develop her skills in that field and gain some real-world experience. Her natural knack for listening and narrative development quickly earned her a spot on the team as a Creative Production Assistant, where she is able to get her hands dirty in a variety of areas. She enjoys being a jack of all trades. She is currently working on building up Chance’s website, attending shoots to assist the team, blog planning, updating Stories Without Borders.com, organizing video projects and narrative development as an assistant editor.

What inspires her the most?

“When I watch a finished draft of a story we’ve told, a story that I’ve been involved with from start to finish, I feel incredibly inspired. Creating a story takes so much work, so much attention to detail, so much listening and attentiveness to the people being featured...it’s amazing when it all comes together.”

Dan came to us as a skilled craft editor.

He came to Colorado by bicycle in 2013 and just recently landed at Chance Multimedia. Living in Ohio, he had attended Ohio University for Photojournalism and Film and held a position as a staff photographer at the Columbus Dispatch. While freelancing in Colorado for outdoor lifestyle clients, Daniel was looking for something bigger which would help him give back to a larger community. As an Editor and Cinematographer, he is able to help tell stories which, in turn, help inspire people to think outside of their immediate lives. Daniel has experience working with nonprofits such as Local Matters in Columbus, Ohio and Paradox Sports in Boulder, Colorado and is using those experiences to help communicate the stories we here at Chance Multimedia are passionate about.

What inspires him the most?

“I am inspired by passionate people or groups who are not afraid to stand up and make their voices heard. We often work with exceptionally driven subjects and try to tell their stories with as much conviction as they tell them. Being able to feel that energy and weave it into the work we are doing here is a very inspirational feeling.”

Re-Introducing Chance Multimedia: Our Story

Watching the sunrise in Cascas, Peru. Photo by Dr. Bruce McArthur.

We arrived in Denver on January 3, 2009 with a moving truck, two laptops, some multimedia equipment and an Every Human Has Rights Media Award. The award, our first together as a company, had come with a free trip to Paris along with 28 other winners from around the world. We spent the trip talking, debating and dreaming about media, journalism, communication, and what Chance Multimedia would become (once we really got started).

During the previous year, we worked out of backpacks together in the Philippines, Cambodia, Guatemala and Thailand, building our ability to produce work together in tiny rooms. James with his cameras and me with my computer. Crafting interviews, shot lists, and sequences, writing, and working it all out as we went. Visiting people living in mausoleums, in monasteries, and on the street. Gathering stories. Oftentimes, breaking my own heart in the process.

Before deciding to leave Ohio and begin Chance Multimedia, we worked on a national foster care project with young people who had been raised in the foster care system. Between our international stories and our national advocacy work, we began to shape our vision and balance how our strengths might work,  together.

So when we arrived in Denver in 2009, we were on our way to establishing a multimedia storytelling company that we knew would be different. Our partnership would focus on telling real stories, authentically captured and woven with beautiful visuals, from a transparent point of view. Stories that would invigorate audiences — as well as the staff of the organizations we would work for — because they were told from a grassroots level, outside of the conference room.

We wanted to produce stories that would touch hearts, because they were true.

We just needed that first project.

After hundreds of cold calls, several networking events, and a lot of projects that fell through, it came. And then another, and another. Slowly, with gratitude to the clients who took a chance with a small, new kind of video team, we began to grow. At some point in 2010, we stopped making calls and networking. We were too busy, and the word-of-mouth recommendations kept it that way. It was happening.

Nearly half way through 2012, I'm very pleased to say that we haven't slowed down a bit. In fact, we're still gaining momentum and expanding faster than we even expected, not only in our work, but in our staff, our brand, and our space. (But more on that in an upcoming post..)

Soon, we hope to travel back to Manila to finish a 30-minute documentary that we started in the Philippines on that epic trip in 2008, about a community of people living in the North Cemetery. It's the same project that won the Every Human Has Rights Media Award. We're eager now to bring our enhanced skills, knowledge and attention to the varied perspectives of the people living there who have generously shared their lives, thoughts and dreams with us over the years, and weave them together into a long-form documentary.

As we look forward to all of the new happenings in our work this year, I want to emphasize the values that we bring to our work every single day:

We believe that authentic, true stories are the best way to cut through the communication clutter, and it's what we do best.

We believe that strong, clean visuals honor the stories we produce by making even difficult and sad stories beautiful.

We believe our stories honor the storyteller's truth and experience. We listen, and we respect the courage it takes to share one person's truth with another (and the dynamics of telling that story in front of a lens).

Finally, we regard each of our clients as a partnership that grows and becomes more valuable over time.

We are so grateful to the many client partners who have enabled us to come to this place in our own story.

We'll be publishing a series of blogs during the next few months, introducing new team members, going behind the scenes on some of the stories we've produced, and looking back at some of the most valuable mistakes we've made over the years.

Thanks for reading,

Jessica Chance.