I’ve been producing videos since I was 16 – no joke. I was privileged to go to a high school where they had an amazing media production program, with arguably the best teacher too. Ken Keene was the sort of teacher that made each student believe they were capable of doing great things. He is an artist at heart and taught us how to focus on our work as if we were artists creating a masterpiece.
After my first class with Mr. Keene, I was hooked and ended up taking every media production class available. At some point, Mr. Keene encouraged me to enter two national film competitions. When I won first place at both, I decided I had found what I would do for the rest of my life.
After 10 years of doing this full-time, I still can’t believe I get to wake up every day and do what I love. I know so many people who hate their jobs, and I sometimes pinch myself to make sure this is all real (so far I’m convinced it is real, so if it isn’t and we are all in the matrix or something, please spare me the truth). 😉
And for 8 of those years, Todd and I have been creating videos together under the name NoBox Films. In that time, we’ve seen a lot that makes us believe in the power of storytelling:
We watched a company on the verge of closing its doors use a video we produced in its sales meetings to close some major deals.
We saw how a story we captured helped a non-profit raise the funds it needed to reach its goals and help even more people.
And we’ve built relationships with so many couples, we’ve heard them tell us how they cry as they relive their wedding day in a way they never imagined possible.
Recently, though, we had a realization: as much as we love ALL of the projects we’ve worked on, we’ve only been showing our clients the wedding videos we’ve produced. So most clients assume all we do is weddings.
That’s when we decided we needed to make a change…
We needed to completely rebrand and change our business name.
Right away I began researching what storytelling does to the brain, and here’s what I discovered: the brain is wired for story. In fact, when you hear facts and figures, only a small area of the brain is engaged.. But when you hear a story, MULTIPLE regions of the brain are activated, engaging our emotions and senses.
As I researched more, I discovered that one the regions of the brain that is activated in storytelling is called the insular cortex.
I loved the word insular, but figured it would be tricky to pronounce and spell if used as a business name. So I wondered if it would work to shorten the word to “sula” instead. I added the word to my long list of business name ideas and ran them by Todd & Justin. They liked it a lot, and we decided we had found our new name.
So as of August 1, 2016, NoBox Films is now Sula Studios.
We are really excited about this next chapter. For so long we have been doing work we genuinely care about and believe in, and now we can share it with the world.
So the next time you are watching a movie and find yourself completely lost in its story, think about how much it’s affecting you – maybe your heart is beating faster, maybe your stomach is in knots, maybe tears are falling down your face, or maybe you’ve closed your eyes because you are too afraid to see what happens next…
THAT is the very thing we are most passionate about – creating captivating videos.
And as much as great stories have the power to affect us, we believe they have the power to unite us too.
Thanks for checking out our site and some of the videos we are most passionate about.
– Krisanna Mowen