When I moved to Austin four years ago, it was a total shock at how welcoming everyone was! This city is incredible at welcoming new entrepreneurs and I vowed to pay it forward. Hence, why I’m bringing you a new interview today with Joshua and Parisa! They aren’t new to the city, but they’re trying to get the word out there about their wonderful videography company! Since we’re all trapped at home, take some of that extra time and use it to learn all about Joshua and Parisa, an Austin Wedding Videography company!
- How did you get into videography?? Give us all the juicy deets!
Since childhood Josh always wanted a video camera and started making home videos when his parents bought one for him as a gift for Christmas when he was 13. During high school he shot a ton of videos and photos on his phone which believe or not was still a bit weird at the time as the social media age was just beginning. He knew that he loved shooting stuff but didn’t consider it possible to have a career in video. It was when he started college in 2013 that all of that changed. He started posting weekly to a Youtube channel and joined a film club where he started to learn that he might want to pursue a career in video. He learned that he loved shooting short films with friends and even produced a feature length film in the Spring semester of his freshmen year. Through these projects he learned how to lead and build a team, run logistics, and solve tough problems during pre-production, production, and post-production.
Parisa’s childhood was full of world travel. A daughter of two immigrants who also happened to be teachers, her family all had tons of time to travel during summers. In high school she started to document her travels professionally with her first DSLR camera. She mostly shot landscape and photojournalism photography of everywhere she went, posting to her Instagram frequently. She ended up creating her first video when her brother participated in a Rubix cube competition in Austin, Texas. She started to learn that she could do more with her camera than just taking photos.
When Josh was in his Junior year as an economics major at the Univ. of Texas at Austin and Parisa was a sophomore studying mechanical engineering they met for the first time in an on campus organization called Humans of the Forty Acres. Similar to the popular Facebook page Humans of New York, they worked as photographers for the organization. Parisa had joined the organization a few months before Josh. When he joined, the organization was starting to pick up momentum on campus and to further that Josh proposed shooting a video project. After he proposed the project and the group agreed to produce it, Parisa volunteered to help. The two met for the first time at a restaurant near campus to discuss the details for what was supposed to be a 30 minute meeting. That meeting turned into 3 hours of talking about much more than just the project and both of them walked away excited to work together. To make a long story short, after creating that video a classmate of Parisa’s who was a wedding photographer part-time invited her to shoot a wedding film for one of her couples. Parisa reached out to Josh for help on the project and that is what launched them into creating a business and taking on more weddings during college. As Josh was approaching the end of his senior year, the two decided to put more time into the business and pursue it full-time. To read the story of how Josh and Parisa became a couple you can click here.
- What is it like, being in a relationship and running a business? What is rewarding about it? What is difficult?
Running a business as a couple teaches you so much about your relationship. It shows you how each other react’s under pressure, how 
you fill in each other’s gaps, and really tests your maturity to separate business decisions from disagreements within your relationship as much as possible. Decisions in both parts of your lives inevitably affect one another as you reach difficult decisions along your journey but what we can say is that we’ve grown much more quickly in our relationship thanks to our business. After overcoming so much in both parts of our lives we’ve grown professionally and individually so quickly. We believe that we’re lightyears ahead in our life experience. We don’t think a relationship and business can work for every couple but in our case it worked out and allowed our love for each other to become deeper. We were forced to face problems head on when we could have otherwise delayed them. Now, anytime a problem occurs in our relationship we address it immediately. That habit has become so beneficial to the success of our relationship and business.
- What is your favorite thing about your job? Least favorite?
We love the people we work with. Our couples are extraordinary people that bring happiness to the world everyday and the fact that we get to capture moments on their wedding day that will stay with them for the rest of their lives is the ultimate reward for us. We love following the journeys of our couples after their wedding days too. Watching them start families, succeed in their careers, and grow in their relationship over time brings us unbelievable amounts of joy. Our other favorite parts about our job include engaging with couples and their guests on their wedding day, meeting up with couples for double dates, creating artwork for couples’ homes, and receiving amazing feedback when we deliver their films.
Our least favorite part of our work is handling the business logistics like taxes and paperwork. Narrowing down the the footage we use in our films and the final images we plan to deliver to couples can also be tough. We shoot so much on wedding days and filing through everything to find all of the content we intend to use is the least enjoyable part.
- What is a total goal location spot for you? Any big dreams?
Our goal location spot is anywhere that we can shoot a couple near mountains/hills and a body of water. We love both of these elements because they’re fun to adventure in with couples and our biggest dream is to shoot underwater with couples. We think a session starting with amazing attire in the mountains, with fully clothed shots of couples in a clear ocean, and finishing with tons of fun in swimsuits sounds amazing. We love involving nature in our shoots. A huge bonus would be an urban area nearby to get some cityscape stuff to. We basically want to do everything with a couple in one shoot. It may sound crazy to do so much in one day, but we couldn’t be happier.
Our big dream is to become the best wedding filmmaker in the world within 5 years. We want the biggest projects at the best locations around the world. We also hope to never shoot at the same venue twice so that our creativity is always at it’s peak and pushing us to become better. In 5 years we see ourselves shooting 18 weddings a year with a team that we love working with.
Our big dream after that will be educating the next generation of wedding filmmakers.
- Tell us two weird things about each of you!
Josh doesn’t like cheese! He’s also lactose intolerant so at least those two go together – lol! He also enjoys charging batteries. For some reason the idea of charging a battery and seeing it slowly recharge overtime is super exciting for him. Sometimes he’ll just charge batteries as something fun to do.
Parisa LOVES cats BUT she’s moderately allergic. One time we were taking a walk together through Austin and she saw a cute cat. After Josh told her not to pick it up, he looked away for a second and Parisa had picked up the cat, hugged it, touched her face way too much, and then happily dealt with the consequences. If that’s not true love we don’t know what is. Another weird thing about her is that she spends all of her spare time reading the news and she stays up to date on all things within the medical world.
- How do you describe your videography work?
Our videography work is candid and authentic in a way that captures every couple’s style and spirit. The tone of each wedding film always matches the personalities of our couples. One of the staples of our films is how we capture cinematic dance floor footage that draws you into the fun of every reception so that our couples can relive the feeling of their reception, not just the romanticism of the other parts of their day. We put a huge value on showing the fun and excitement of a wedding day as the perfect counterpart to the love and romance.
