“Alex Belville: Filmmaker, Family Man, and Advocate for Youth Substance Abuse Prevention”
[00:00:08] Jake White: It’s your host Jake White. Welcome to Party Talk, where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention today. I’m in the studio, mirrorless studio is awesome. We’re in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and we’re going to talk with its founder. He has an amazing story. He’s doing some awesome stuff. Alex Belville, how’s it going? Nice to meet you guys. Introduce yourself out and tell us about you?
[00:00:36] Alex Belville: Yes, I’m Alex Belville. I’m a filmmaker. And I own mirrorless productions. We’re a video production company here in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, we focus on creating fast paced cinematic videos. We work with a lot of local businesses and brands, and create videos for social media and websites. And it’s very fun to work with a diverse set of clientele, from nonprofits, small businesses, to big businesses. And I’m also a father, husband and I have four awesome kids, ranging from one to 15. So we’re not creating videos. I’m pretty busy being a family man.
[00:01:09] Jake White: That is awesome. And do we met in college? I think we met at one of my sober parties.
[00:01:13] Alex Belville: Yes.
[00:01:17] Jake White: With whatever you’re comfortable with, tell us why you passionate about prevention or recovery and a little bit about your story?
[00:01:22] Alex Belville: Well, first off, just touch on, Jake’s party point parties at UW Oshkosh where I met him, because what was really cool for me was when I met Jake, I had come back to school as a non traditional student. So in my mid 20s, after turning my life around, so I’m trying, I had two young kids, i am back to school and meeting new people, trying to stay sober, most importantly, get a good education and learn about film. So that’s why I went back to school. But we all need a little bit of a break, have fun, too. And so I heard about the silver parties by another friend, a non traditional student of mine, and we’re like, let’s go to one like then we foggy it out. I loved it. Because I knew that showing up there, there wasn’t going to be any alcohol. I didn’t know that it would actually really look like an awesome college party. And there would be like, 100 plus people there. We went, we had a blast, there was dancing, there was music, there was a DJ, long story short, I ended up going to a few more. I got to perform music at one of them. And it was just an awesome experience. But it’s also something I really looked back on to just being able to go to those sober parties. I’ve told a lot of people about them to come too.
[00:02:28] Jake White: Yes, and you’re involved in the local Drug Prevention Coalition. So tell us about your involvement in that.
[00:02:35] Alex Belville: I’m very passionate. About kids, i am not drinking and partying. And I’m passionate about prevention, because I’m someone who, really struggled with addiction and substance abuse. It started at a young age early high school from 14 years old, until I was about 21, 22. And I had a really hard time. And if I could go back, I know you can’t change anything. But if I could go back, I wish I would have waited years to do or try some of the things that I did, or wish I wouldn’t have even done them. But it’s also made me the man who I am today. But I work with breakwater, which is a local coalition here in Oshkosh at Winnebago County that works to prevent youth substance abuse. And so they asked me to be on the coalition on the communications team a little over a year ago, just because, they knew that I’m someone in recovery, but they knew that I was passionate about that prevention, and creating videos, and they were a client of mine. So it just worked out. So we meet once a month, and go over a lot of different ways on how we could help youth right here in our own city, help with prevention, from creating marketing pieces, that aligns with prevention, a lot of different things we do, so it’s fun.
[00:03:54] Jake White: I’m going to embarrass you for a second, because I know how awesome your work is and what you’ve done. You’ve done some stuff for me too, so I can include some links to your work there. Just brag for a little bit about some projects you’ve done or people you’ve worked with. Don’t be modest.
[00:04:13] Alex Belville: I would say, my favorite thing to share with people is one of the coolest things that we’ve got to do is we have had a partnership with Gary Vaynerchuk sports agency, Vayner Sports Hall, which has allowed me to meet and filmed for Gary Vaynerchuk, Ryan create videos for NFL players, our game marshals with NFL players, Green Bay Packer ones and a few other ones too. But that has been awesome. That was really 2018, 2019. We had a lot of different projects with his sports organization, which led us from creating videos in Green Bay and with some Packer players to getting flown out to California to filming commercials which led us to the Super Bowl in 2019. I did not actually get to go to the Super Bowl, but I filmed parties leading up to the Super Bowl and all the events I have Vayner Sports had, and it was just a blast and a time I will forever look back on, I would say that’s really the probably the biggest, I’ve had our work shared by, different organizations, we’ve had Harley Davidson post a video of ours that we’ve created. So that was pretty cool. And I’ve had a lot of full circle or one of the million moments I like to say, though, I attributed that to just lock in, never giving up on chasing the stream, in creating videos for 10 years now.
“Empowering Youth Through Engaging Prevention Videos”
[00:05:30] Jake White: That is so cool. I’m going to put you on the spot, again, with maybe some tips. So this is for prevention professionals, and you’re very skilled in video. So one thing that we’ve known is, that young people they’re communicating on Snapchat and Tiktok, and Instagram, there’s going to be a new platform out in six months, I’m sure they’re going to switch over to, be real, that stuff. When we are looking at youth and video, it’s non comparison, they want video. That’s the content they want. Do you have any tips or strategies when maybe a coalition or prevention organization is creating video, ways to make it a little better? Or easier to put together? Do you have any tips that you could give us?
[00:06:15] Alex Belville: Yes. I think number one, and a lot of us know this, but it’s a great reminder, the videos have to be short, how short is short? I’d say in their world, 60 seconds is long. And that maybe hard to hear, if we make more than 60 second videos that we make anything else, but now these days, especially over the last couple of years, we’re taking those 60 second videos, or making 30 seconds, 15 seconds. And pretty quickly here, I’ll probably be making concise. But I think 15 second videos for TikTok. And Instagram Stories can be huge. I still think you can if you make a fast paced video or an engaging video, you can get away with the 60 seconds and still grab their attention. So how do you do that? That brings me to my next tip. Okay, that video should be fast paced, it should have music and it should have shots and things that grab their attention. So if you start out with the video, that’s just 15 seconds someone talking, no background music, no anything. You don’t even know who they are. There was no title. It might be hard for them to get sucked into that message. What if you showed in that first 10 to 15 seconds, 5, 6 different shots, music behind it? Grab them with a quote or a statement. It’s going to pique their interest. You have to make videos that are fast paced and engaging.
[00:07:36] Jake White: Very good. Well, what else do you got? So they got to be fast paced, quick, time is important. Is there anything else that can help them maybe capture or bring out good content story?
[00:07:47] Alex Belville: I think the way that you shoot videos, too. So for example, even if you have a phone, if you’re able to light that subject, just bring in some extra light, focus on composing that shot nice, because the way that a video how I am framed right now on camera. The way that we’re framing, the way that we watch stuff, it actually pushes us into there, we want to watch it more if it’s good and framed properly, or if it feels weird, or that person’s really far back. We’re not going to be as into that. So how you set up even that initial shot. Forget about if you’re filming with a phone, or a $4,000 camera. You could still take a phone video and make it look great by putting the light on or having a mic on and connecting the mic to the phone, or just opening the window or making sure the heater in the background noises are turned out. Right before we film this. We turned off the heaters. It’s those little things that make a huge difference that I think a lot of people forget to do, especially when they pick up the phone. But even with the phone video, there’s still a lot you can do to make that better and more fun.
[00:08:51] Jake White: Absolutely. That’s cool. You actually told me about something just before we were talking about that with your organization, your phone out to DC to showcase one of your videos in our field. Can you just tell us a little bit more about that organization and what that was?
[00:09:05] Alex Belville: Yes, so we made a really cool video called thriving and recovery, which was a positive PSA short film that we made for the Winnebago County OFR. OFR stands for (Overdose Fatality Review). So we made this video for the ofr team, that’s thriving and recovery video. And this video showcases real people in Winnebago County, behind including in the video and I made the video, I wanted the people have recovered in the video. But it showcases all these real people in recovery. And it shows that they might doing the thing they love to do, like so for me that’s filming. And upon that filming or hanging with my kids, I’m biking. So it’s showing people recovery, doing that job that they dreamed of or that hobby that they didn’t do, when they were using and that they didn’t do until they turn their life around. So this video, it’s been awesome. It’s garnered a lot of not just local attention but state and national attention. This video brought me out to Washington DC like you said, in January, and we got to premiere it with the Winnebago OFR. I got to get up on stage and teed the video up and tell a little bit about my story. And the video was with a huge applause after, we’re actually allowing different organizations and all of ours across the nation to use this video. And we’re switching out the end graphics slide with a local resource of theirs. So we’re trying to actually give back with this video. It’s just really cool what’s been happening with it because we’ve got such a positive response. We’ve had other groups that are trying to further fund the project to get it out there on TV, we have some potential big things happening with video that I can’t quite say right now, happening later this summer. So I’m really excited, but the video is out there. If you look up thriving recovery PSA filming on YouTube, you’ll find.
[00:10:54] Jake White: Awesome, I’ll put a link there too. And then finally, maybe that’s interesting to someone or they’re interested in filming or private because you do a lot with nonprofits and PSAs and stuff like that. If someone wants to get in touch with you. How do they get?
[00:11:10] Alex Belville: I would say email is the best or our websites. Our website is mirrorlessprod.com. For we’ll put a link in to otherwise my email mirrorlessprod@gmail.com.
[00:11:23] Jake White: Thanks, Alex. That’s it. One more episode of Party Talk. If you haven’t got a chance already, please press subscribe if you liked this show, give us a review if you like it, and we’ll see you on another episode of Party Talk.
