Check Out Ethan Trani’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ethan Trani

Hi Ethan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My brother and I had always had a passion for the arts and film. Growing up in our home state of New Jersey our parents would bring us to New York every week since I (Ethan) was around 8 years old as a child actor for auditions and commercials. All of my siblings including Daniel would work in acting as a child in both theatre and tv. This is where we believe our first love for production started and in 2018 we were a part of our first student film production for college which began our love for the behind the camera work.

Our business ventures started in 2019 when the pandemic began and the lockdowns were in place. At the time, both Daniel and I were full time film students at chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga and I had 2 part time jobs in both IT & Audio Visual. As you know, many individuals couldn’t go to work and for a little while I wasn’t allowed to go to work either. During this time, we felt that instead of playing videogames and wasting our time, we wanted to try something new, which was start a business in doing what we both loved which is film. Daniel and I started by asking schools in Fontana along with ma & pa stores and restaurants if they would be interested in having us do free video work to help their businesses stay connected to their communities while we were all in lockdown. Our first video work began as announcement videos, interviews, and small promos for our first bit of work experience in video production.

After some time working and filming for several smaller companies, we learned that Cities may also be in need of some video work to reach out to their own communities, so in 2021 we reached out to our City and asked their public works dept. If they were in need of video work. Surprisingly they replied and we had our first meeting on what we can provide for their department. We started with a test video and after about 2 months they called us and asked for 10+ more videos this actually helped motivate us to pursue this as a career and allowed us to grow and elevate our clientele and experience.

Soon afterwards we leased our first office in September 2022 and built our rentable podcast studio “Ontario Podcast Studio” in February on Euclid and G Street in the Hensley Torta Building in Downtown Ontario where we still operate today.

Since then we’ve had so many awesome and exciting experiences. Working for both the Turkish, Nigerian, Christian, and Muslim communities along with Medical, Sports, Government, Education and Faith based companies & Entities over the past 4 years in our local area and beyond. We also had the exciting opportunity to film several times at the “Lyon Air Museum” located at “John Wayne International Airport”, filming podcasts for one of our clients. We also filmed at PGA’s Championship Tour at Hoag Classic filming podcasts for one of our clients, which was a surreal experience.

Our team is currently focused on the new movement and industry pivot towards Podcasts and have made that our primary focus of 2024 moving into 2025 along with a new service that we have actually provided several dozen times but only entirely via referrals and friends, but that we never have really promoted ourselves for which is weddings. We have found we’ve had more success in this as well as podcasts but have not yet tapped into the full potential of how we can best serve our community and those who would appreciate these two services.

Although video has been amazing and a dream to work in, making feature films and movies is our greatest dream and the ability to fund and have them distributed or distribute them ourselves somday is a dream and ultimate goal of ours.

Both my brother and I have graduated from CSUN (California State University of Northridge) in Entertainment Media Management in 2024 which we have utilized as a tool for networking and collaboration with our peers in this industry and has given me personally the confidence to pitch and communicate with our clients to a more effective extent that has been already beneficial to us and those we work with.

Other ventures we have currently is a new apparel company still in the works called Ink&Enamel which sells apparel currently with messages based on how we feel as humans and individuals living in this sometimes crazy, stressful, exciting and exhausting world.

And we are also looking into expanding our reach into producing more podcast studios and rentable facilities in the months and years to come.

One of my personal ultimate goals and dreams would be able to create spaces and venues (being an audio visual technician) that individuals and artists could come perform and display their passions and abilities in, as well as host gatherings and social events for their communities. To create something that people enjoy and could have incredible memories in. Seeing that come to fruition would be one of the greatest joys and accomplishments of my life.

To be very generous I believe you need to be able to generate, and if our businesses grow, I only want them to be a gift to others and give back to our communities and those who also have their own dreams they want to accomplish. Looking back and seeing that my gifts, and dreams helped inspire, motivate, and uplift others would be the highlight and most satisfying feeling of my life.

This is TraniFilms and our vision in a nutshell.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Many mistakes have occurred throughout the years from financial challenges, to organization, and our work/Life Balance.

After we built the podcast studio, we had rushed too quickly to expand further without properly analyzing our current progress and organization of our first studio and we lost about $13,000 on a completely different photography studio we leased and built which we had to close in 4 months which become a big issue financially and almost ended both of our businesses.

We also tried digital marketing, and social media management services which both failed due to a lack of education and development on the actual services we were providing.

Of course we’ve had our fair share of interesting clients with specific tastes in final products which made things very interesting and somethings challenging at times.

Learning how to price our services, manage our company, learn from mistakes, and organize our communication and company management have also been challenges at times. That ultimately we have found to be crucial learning experiences.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I (Ethan) am a Audio/Visual Technician, Co-Founder of a video production company and Podcast Studio Space owner.

I love building studios, working with video interfaces and troubleshooting problems related to media and video related tech. I am also a proud entrepreneur and love seeing something I’ve built be appreciated and found useful by others.

Daniel is a co-founder of a video production company and podcast studio space. He is also a musician and drums for his local church Water of Life Community Church in Fontana CA.

We always strive for excellence in our work, and one unique factor we have for our services is that not only do we provide the solution to one problem, we try and provide multiple solutions to multiple media and video related needs with one service. Creating a streamlined transactional and service providing system. This prevents headaches, and complicated processes that throw our clients off what they are trying to accomplish.

For our weddings we provide not only your videography services but also provide social media reels for your community and family to see, we also like to integrate social media and other new digital tools that enhance your experiences further than just capturing memories but actually help make them as well with you.

For podcasts we try to be more than a studio with microphones, and cameras, we try to eliminate as much of the post production process as possible by creating a system where we can have a client show up at our studio, and right after their podcast session within the hour have a pre-cut and pro-mixed video ready and in their hands for posting instead of waiting 1 to 2 weeks for a final product. We also integrated the ability to interview individuals outside of the studio whereever they are around the world from the studio.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I’m pretty much an open book, but I’m also an introvert so normally I will not approach you with my life, however if you asked I’d tell you gladly.

Pricing:

• Pricing for weddings can range from 1200 – 5500 depending on their needs.
• Pricing for our podcast services in studio are normally $175 an hour that includes an on-site technician, but we have packages that discounts are applied to
• All pricing can be found on Tranifilms.com & Ontariopodcaststudio.com

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/Tranifilms?fbclid=PAY2xjawGmcFNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABphA8LS0Z_2zNHypmK8_YxpskJGW9RMxZm369v5cwcI_y5klJ-a3qI-uWvg_aem_NcViDcZ1LSocLljGRlx0YQ
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tranifilms/profilecard/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==