Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Adkins.
Hi Alex, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I think it’s kind of crazy that I ended up owning this business, and my journey has felt like “The Long and Winding Road” by The Beatles– lol. I’m not known for being concise, and I may be biased, but feel like my journey can inspire other people to realize that you don’t have to know anything about anything to do it. Unless you’re a brain surgeon.
I really feel like my journey started as early as I could hold a pencil when I basically did all of the creative things. Growing up in Allen, Texas, my childhood was spent drawing and coloring, trying piano lessons, making puppets out of brown paper lunch sacks for an Easter puppet show, and making home movies with my brothers and grandparents. My grandparents on my dad’s side are both really artistic, and while I’m not biologically related to them, I feel like they’re the two biggest creative inspirations in my life. My grandpa used to play in bluegrass bands, and my grandma is a painter. Spending time with them growing up was always a “yes, and…” moment, and it felt like there was nothing off-limits creatively. While they couldn’t afford to take us on lavish vacations, our trips with them stick out the most because of how much fun we had traveling to New Mexico and Colorado for camping, hiking, and exploring. I feel like my childhood was kind of the end of getting “analog” playtime– card games, cooking, and hunting for Pokémon fossils are some standouts. I’m so lucky to still have them with me, and they still inspire and encourage me to use my unique voice and perspective in my work.
I was in my first musical in the fourth grade– The Music Man, Jr., and I feel like that was my first experience of being an artist, as silly as that sounds. I remember my mom helping me buy my costume and get ready at home, and the first time being in a backstage environment was pivotal– also I still don’t understand how elementary kids did a whole-ass musical! I did every musical and play I could in middle and high school. And it was everything to me. I was in choir, auditioned for All-State, and was in our high-school a cappella group, and all of those different pockets helped me explore things that I really felt passionately about, and I could feel the love coming back from them. My friends became like family, mainly because I spent most of my time with them at rehearsal and even skipped multiple family vacations just so I could stay in town over spring break for rehearsal. When I came out of my senior year of high school, these people loved and supported me, and I’m lucky enough to still call them some of my best friends.
You’re probably confused because I do video work and there isn’t any mention of video or photo at this point, and to that, I’ll just say “yes you’re correct”.
I graduated high school and attended TCU with the intent of studying choral music education. About six weeks in, I hated music theory and being forced to play the piano, so I said “oh hell no”. I started thinking about what else I could do to work with music but not be a music major. There was no music production or technology degree, and I missed theatre (music and theatre weren’t really things you could do together) but didn’t want a performance degree. Looking at my proverbial list of pros and cons, I randomly decided to land on technical theatre because it would let me work in theatre *and* music while getting a degree that I felt was more “justifiable”, whatever that means.
Through this program, I also was given a grant that would pay some tuition, in exchange for working in the scenic studio building sets for the theatre productions. At the time I had maybe made a single cut on a miter saw and painted a few backdrops, but that was it. I needed the money and was excited to just be “in it”, so I said why the hell not and dove right in. By the end of my sophomore year, I had been part of the build for every show, as well as two seasons of the Trinity Shakespeare Festival. I was given the opportunity to build, hang lights, and run sound during the festival, and working in a professional environment was incredible.
Also, during my undergrad, I helped create our university’s mixed-voices a cappella group. It wasn’t part of the School of Music, so we ran everything ourselves, and that’s where I think I got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. From funding pitches to our Student Government, travel coordinating, to admin work, I weirdly loved it, and I knew I was good at it. It also gave me an outlet to be on the performance side that I still missed, and gave me a great perspective from both sides.
I also randomly filmed a wedding with an ex-boyfriend my junior year, and the summer before my senior year took an internship doing wedding videography in Lubbock, where my parents had moved to because I wanted a break from theatre. At that point, it wasn’t my favorite but I was excited to learn more about post-production in general because I was trying to pursue a career as a recording engineer in music.
I graduated in the spring of 2017 having sound designed about six plays, assisted in six musicals, and created something new out of nothing. I landed an internship at a small production company that produced studio music for cappella groups, and I was like “This Is It”. They had a small video department, and I was voluntold that I’d be doing video work because of my experience. I didn’t know anything about music videos, but I said yes to it, and it actually became my favorite part of my job at that company. My time there was short-lived, and in 2019 I returned to my theatre roots! I was offered a position with Royal Caribbean on board their ships as a stagehand and took that mainly because I wanted to travel. Then comes Miss Rona in 2020– when I was still on ships. To make it short, the cruise lines were immediately shut down, but the CDC wouldn’t allow crew members off, even American crew members, so I was stranded somewhere off the coast of Barbados for two months.
And this is where my wedding film business finally comes into play. We were all isolated in our (tiny, windowless) cabins for two weeks, and with spotty Wi-Fi, I had to kill time. I started dreaming up what I could do back on land since my current career was on hold and maybe wouldn’t return. I went through a similar thing that I did my freshman year of college and asked myself the same questions– how can I combine this random set of skills into something I love? And this time, pay my bills. I started thinking about my experiences in the past and remembered how weird wedding videography was, But how much fun making music videos was. I had the most fun on the music videos that I had creative direction and freedom over, and was like “Can I make wedding videos that I enjoy?” After some digging and you Tubing, I found some amazing resources and a huge variety of creativity in the newly-discovered wedding industry. I found a book (The Freelance Bible by Alison Grade) that helped me start my business, and in isolation, I devoured that thing. I did every single “homework” activity in it, from writing out my “why” to my first set of videography packages. I also went on a binge of ordering my first round of real equipment– the original Sony A7S and a nifty 50 (aka the cheapest lens you can buy).
They finally allowed us off the ship, and I had to go somewhere– but I didn’t have a place on my own on land, so I got to live every 25-year-old’s dream and move back in with my parents, which meant finding a job asap. I knew my creative options in Lubbock would be limited, but then it hit me– I *worked* in wedding videography in Lubbock! So *surely* in the age of Covid they would have an overflowing amount of extra work to outsource to me! Damn, hindsight really is 20/20.
All jokes aside, I did end up contacting my old boss about some wedding work. The company was actually a marketing firm with a wedding video department, run by the owner’s sister. And this was the kicker– his sister was leaving the company for a new job and they needed someone to take her position, And they weren’t looking internally. It was like the stars aligned, and I put my own business on hold because I just needed any job, and finding something I even remotely enjoyed during Covid was a dream come true.
My position there was to be in charge of all external sales and communication, as well as internal project management. Between three full-time editors and filmmakers and what felt like ten inters, I was somehow managing all of this on Google Sheets, with email flags being my best friend. I wanted to be polite and not be too pushy early on, but I knew going into it that the brand needed a refresh. It hadn’t been touched since the company started in 2010 (which was actually lowkey the beginning of real wedding filmmaking), and I knew that wedding videography was in a different place in 2020. I didn’t understand as much about branding as I do now, but I knew we needed a facelift and a re-centering in order to create something, as a team, that we felt passionate about and believed in. I led the re-brand pitch along with two other department managers, who were actual designers and illustrators, and in September of 2020, pitched a *big* rebrand to our owners. This was huge because it didn’t look or feel like our old brand but took it somewhere new and fresh, and most importantly was something that I was more invested in. And to cut to the case– they bought it. We had the whole fall to build the brand, and we launched in January 2021.
Because of the rebrand, we had a new discussion about more wedding volume, and because of those expectations, I pitched an expansion into the DFW market. I didn’t think it was possible to reach our goals solely in West Texas, and I knew I could crush it in my old stomping grounds. I knew the metroplex pretty well and wasn’t afraid to get in a room full of people I knew. Luckily, I found a networking organization where I knew one single person and took a work trip from Lubbock to Fort Worth to represent the company and pitch our services to planners, venues, photographers, et al. Repeat that four or five times, and I got to know vendors in this community pretty well. After a few trips, a lot of them were really kind and complimentary and started asking me if I would ever start my own thing to do this. I hadn’t really thought about it since I started this job in 2020 and felt bad even talking about it since I was there representing another company. But about two months went by and I couldn’t get the ideas out of my head, and I knew that only meant one thing– taking the leap.
I put in my two-week notice (which turned into a month) and during my last week I took a day off to do a styled shoot at The Olana under my brand– my first real thing as Alex Adkins Creative. I left my job in April of 2021, had two other shoots on my own, and even booked three weddings in my first month! I officially launched my business in June of 2021, and that shoot at The Olana was published in a major wedding publication– like who does that? A major publication in their first month, before even being a “real” business??? It was insanity.
The leap was scary but empowering. I started getting more and more bold, even from the get-go, and not being afraid to voice my opinions about diversity and equality from my platform. It was like the Universe said “You asked for this opportunity– here it is. Now let’s see what you do with it.”
Creating a business that was 100% I has been the best part of this journey. I get to show up as myself, and people pay me to be creative and to use my creativity and perspective to celebrate their love stories. I get to make a piece of art that people will cherish, and will become an heirloom unlike any we’ve ever had access to. I’m not the best filmmaker, but I’m the best at being me and that’s what people care about. I want to create something that feels like my couple through my lens (hate that I said that), and that people DO want to see how I view the world, and they want to see how you view it too. Own your weirdness. Be scared and do it anyway because I guarantee that someone else feels the same. Learn to love the quirks; that’s something I’m working on. Every day is about learning to love my unique and conventionally different qualities because those are my superpower.
And like RuPaul says “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else?”
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been a lifelong journey with more losses than wins, but I wouldn’t be who I am without the struggles. I wouldn’t have this life if I didn’t experience that.
As any queer person will tell you, coming out is probably the hardest thing you’ll experience. But I think what isn’t always communicated is the response to your coming out. Coming out in a vacuum is easy– it’s the response that causes the bullshit.
But through those hardships, I was forced to strip everything away and really analyze and discover my values, because I knew I needed to stand for something for my own humanity, and with the hopes that it would help at least one other person. And every day I’m still discovering peeling back these layers and refining, almost like a state of constant self-evaluation. Is it exhausting? Yeah, kind of. But I think I owe this to my younger self– to leave the world better than I found it.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a wedding filmmaker that specializes in destination weddings and celebrating all different kinds of couples. I’m loud about celebrating queer couples and weddings and making sure people feel beautiful through my films. I love that I get to connect with queer couples in this way, because the wedding industry is still so cis, straight, and white, and often times queer couples face a lot more than your average stressors in wedding planning.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
I said it earlier, but I’ll say it again: be scared, then do it anyway. I try to do things that scare me every day because I believe it will help me grow and help me reap even bigger rewards.
If you feel like you want to stand up for something, do it. Standing up to people is so scary, and the power you feel that they have is real. But *you* also have just as much power as them, and the right people will have your back.
If you’re starting out my advice is:
1. It doesn’t matter what gear you have. Make a film on your iPhone, that would be sick.
2. Be the most known and don’t be afraid to be bold and unapologetic.
Pricing:
- Local Wedding Films start at $5,000
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alexadkinscreative.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexadkinscreative/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk-OCvkVSQqDahNDrOcMCIw
- Other: https://vimeo.com/user140075980
