Meet Barrett Miller II | Filmmaker and Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Barrett Miller II and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Barrett, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The single most important factor behind the success of my brand is taking care of the relationships that I have already built and continuing to build trust in those relationships. Many times as young entrepreneurs, we focus on the next client, the upcoming project or opportunity. I’ve found over the last two years of taking my craft seriously that around 90% of the new money coming in for me right now is because of old clients either calling me back to work with them again or referring me to a friend or colleague because of their positive experience working with me. I always look for ways that I can help previous clients solve any problems they may have regarding content creation, social media, or production. This was easy at first because the majority of people who were giving me business were my existing friends who knew me or went to school with me. Those relationships were easy to maintain, especially if you do good work for them. When it comes to the small business and organizations I work with, I always try finding out what other business problems they may be facing and offer solutions by either offering to help them myself, or use my existing network to lead them to someone more qualified than me who may be able to help them. That levels up your value from just an occasional freelancer that knows how to put videos together, to a business partner who does good work and goes out their way to be an asset to their business. Following up and checking in on those individuals who you worked closely with within the company on an occasional basis can also go a long way in cultivating a relationship that goes beyond just emails and invoices. You want to get to the point in business where your repeat clients are the ones paying your bills. Rather than having to become a full time marketer fighting to get 10 new clients a month, why not establish yourself as a business partner and build trust with existing clients so that way you can use that energy to do better work.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

I am a documentary filmmaker, editor, and photographer with a history in music engineering and songwriting. I picked up a camera my first year of college because I wanted to become a YouTuber. My passion for conversations around issues that affect the black community led to me creating a YouTube talk show called A Lemon Squeeze. Every other week, I would bring 6-8 black students from my school together and we would sit down and talk about issues that plague our community. I hosted, did all the production with the help of a team of 3 which is how I honed my camera skills and started understanding production and editing. I eventually became interested in documenting the black experience in the greater Richmond community.

What sets me apart is my ability to get stories out of people and create for them a safe environment in front of the camera. Because I have a history in hosting my own talk show and interviewing prominent figures such as Keke Palmer, Yara Shahidi, and Kevin Richardson of the Central Park Five, I am able to guide conversation and bring a level of reliability and compassion to the stories I am capturing on film and in photographs. I become invisible and let the stories speak for themselves and unfold how they may.

I eventually became pretty well known as the “camera guy” on my side of campus and was able to fund my passion projects through friends and colleagues who needed graduation videos recorded or events photographed. 2020 was when I found out that I could create a business out of my passion and used all of my stimulus check to purchase my first camera. I’m just now considering myself a “professional” although I’m still a student and only freelance part time. Getting to where I am now was difficult and I still have so much work to do as a professional to get to where I need to be.

I am learning each and every day that it isn’t all about what you are able to capture on your camera. Being creative is only a small portion of being a business owner. You have to know your industry inside and out, you have to know the needs of your clients the same. Also, taxes, placing the right value on your creativity, learning how to say no, marketing your services…these are all challenges you face everyday. Having creative mentors who are older and more experienced was essential for me. Consulting my mentors before making big decisions has kept me from a lot of headaches. Rely on the past experience of others you trust. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far in this journey is to always make time for intentional rest. As creatives we like to think we are able to perform at 100% at all times but that is simply not true. The best ideas tend to come when you aren’t doing ANYTHING. When you aren’t under stress and pressure your brain has space to just be. Being “booked and busy” sounds good on a social media post, but in reality it takes away from your creative potential. Take time in your day or week to just do nothing. Enjoy a quiet mind.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Stephanie Rizzi, my freshman year English professor at VCU deserves a lot of flowers when it comes to my story. She was the only black professor during my first year at a PWI and obviously she was my favorite. The conversations we had in her classroom and the things she would show and read to us made me feel seen in a way no other class or professor did. I actually felt totally comfortable in my blackness in her class. Aside from her just being a great professor, she was the reason I first picked up a camera. For our final spring semester assignment, she told us to create a multi-modal creative piece about what the word “change” meant to us now that we had completed a full year of university coming from high school. She didn’t give us any other instruction and gave us complete creative autonomy on what we wanted to create to express what that word meant to us. Some wrote a poem, some did presentations with freshman year pictures, but I wanted to be extra and make a mini documentary about my friends and their journey. She encouraged me to go all in on it even though it would be too long to even show in class. So I rented a Sony camcorder from the library and carried it around with me everywhere, documenting and interviewing my friends. I scripted, shot, and iMovie edited everything myself. Never have I picked up a camera before that, but because of her encouragement I made my first short film by myself. I fell in love with it and now I’m in my senior year getting paid to make documentaries for small businesses.

Website: https://barrettmillerii.myportfolio.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barrettmillerii/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-CN29sT_hwd2HlW5pdti6w

Image Credits
Me