May 1, 2017

Meet Alan Larsen of Alan Larsen Films in Mid City

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alan Larsen.

Alan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Coming from a film background, I noticed wedding videos were lacking in the creativity and quality department. Most wedding videos I saw were cringe-worthy with cheesy transitions and over the top emotional music and I wouldn’t have wanted any of these videos for my own wedding. I thought a simple and easy way to elevate the quality of wedding videos was to take a cinematic approach and shoot weddings the same way I would tackle a short film. While I was still at USC, I was hired to film my first wedding in this style and once I put it online to advertise, calls started flooding in and the business took off within the first year. It became a full-time gig and within two years I had to hire a full-time employee to work with all the clients the business was receiving.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has been fairly smooth. I started the business during/right after the recession in 2009 which ended up being a great time because I could slowly build the client base and start off at a nice slow pace to better understand how to keep up with demand when people’s economic outlook was better and would start spending more on “luxury” items such as wedding videos.

The only real struggle initially was to convince people that wedding videos are just as important as wedding photography. They are a compliment to one another and video captures emotion that a still image just can’t. Since photography has been a staple, the struggle has been to convince couples that they should set aside more of their budget to accommodate video as well.

Alan Larsen Films – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Alan Larsen Films specializes in creating cinematic wedding films that allow you to relive your wedding day in a unique and artistic way. We are known for our Highlight Films where we compile a complete day of filming into a 5-7 minute video that tells a cohesive story about the events that took place and your love on the wedding day.

I am proud of our accomplishments throughout the 7 years we have been operating in that we have received the “Best of Weddings” award from The Knot all 7 years in a row. One of the main things that sets us apart is our attention to detail and use of quality audio that we capture on the wedding day. People don’t realize how important audio is in a movie/film and it really separates a professional from an amateur.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I really enjoy becoming friends with our clients as we work with them before and on their wedding day. Hearing how much our films mean to them make it all worth it. I would say just having the freedom in my career to make my own work schedule and travel for work is a great blessing and something I am proud to be able to do.

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