An artist profile is the most over-produced and under-planned kind of video there is. Slow pans across canvases, a voiceover about inspiration, a string quartet. The version that actually sells work is simpler: the artist, in the studio, making one specific piece, talking about that piece.
The Kansas City angle
Kansas City has an unusual concentration of working artists for a city its size, partly because of the Kansas City Art Institute and partly because studio space in the Crossroads, the West Bottoms and the Northeast stayed affordable long enough for a scene to form. Galleries on First Fridays, the Nelson-Atkins and Kemper audiences, and a collector base that buys locally all mean a profile film has somewhere to go.
Galleries use these films on the wall next to the work, on the website and in the collector emails. Artists use them for grant applications, residencies and commissions. One shoot serves both if it is planned with both in mind.
One piece, from blank to hung
We would time the shoot to a piece in progress. A morning in the studio with the artist working and mic'd, a twenty-minute interview at the end about that piece only, and, if the calendar allows, a second short visit to film the work being installed for a show. The film opens on the blank surface and ends on the gallery wall.
Two minutes for the gallery and the artist's site; a sixty-second cut for the show announcement; the interview as a longer piece for the grant panel that wants to hear the artist think.
What to actually make
- A two-minute profile — one work, one studio, the artist's own words, no narrator.
- An exhibition trailer — sixty seconds for the gallery's opening-night promotion.
- A grant and residency cut — the interview and the process at length, for panels and juries.
- Studio verticals — the small moments, the palette, the first mark, for the artist's own feed.
What it costs in Kansas City
For most of the businesses in this post the right starting point is the Story Film at $4,500: a full shoot day with interviews, cut into a two-to-three-minute film. Every package is published on our brand film page, and the video production cost page explains what moves the number up or down. There is no travel fee anywhere in the metro, Overland Park to Lee's Summit to Lawrence.
How the shoot works
It is the same two people on every project, Josh and Brandon. We scope it on a call, write the shot list, show up with lights and a lav mic, and stay out of the way of your customers. A first cut lands in about two weeks with unlimited revisions after that, and you own every frame, including the raw footage on request.
If this is your business, the brand film page has the packages, the examples and the calendar link. If you are not sure which package fits, this is how we work and why the prices are on the site.