Daily Inspiration: Meet Andy Chen

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andy Chen.

Hi Andy, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
It started with my sister’s wedding in Temple City. She hired a professional videographer with a strong portfolio and a $4,000 price tag to match. On the day, one guy showed up with a consumer camcorder and a tripod. He set it down, pointed it wherever my sister happened to be, and never moved it again. We were worried, but it was her wedding day, and all we could do was trust him.

Six months later a DVD arrived. The edit looked nothing like the portfolio she had been shown. By then the wedding was over and he had been paid in full. My sister had no way to get that day back, and I was furious.

I was already working full time as a filmmaker, and I knew I could do better. So I called a few camera operator friends and we started filming weddings for people we knew. Each one came out better than the last. In 2010 we made it official and called it Noble Visual, with one rule from the start: what a couple sees in our portfolio is what they get, and nobody gets ripped off.

In 2012 I joined Stream of Praise Music Ministry as a video producer, where I still serve full time. Ministry keeps me close to people in the moments that matter most to them, and that shapes how I show up at a wedding.]

Today we are a small team based in Irvine, offering wedding photography, videography, and content creation across Southern California. Our couples get their films within 90 days. And I still think about my sister’s DVD at every wedding we shoot, because every couple is trusting us the same way she trusted him.

Alright, 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?
No, it has not been a smooth road. COVID was the hardest stretch. Weddings stopped almost overnight, and we had to pivot to commercial work to stay afloat. Those projects paid the bills and kept the team together.

Weddings have been slow to come back for us since then. That has changed how we work. With fewer bookings, we put more into each one, and our focus now is on bringing each couple’s vision to life instead of running every wedding through the same formula. We are doing everything we can to be different from other wedding companies.

The same team still shoots every music video for Stream of Praise Music Ministry. Those videos have passed 1.2 billion views on YouTube. Working at that scale has made us better filmmakers, and everything we learn on those sets comes back to the couples we serve.

Faith has been the steady thing through all of it. We believe that serving through Stream of Praise and serving couples on the most important day of their lives are both ways of using the gifts we have been given. So we keep going. We keep growing, and we keep getting better.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Noble Visual is a wedding photography, videography, and content creation team based in Irvine, serving couples across Southern California.

Most people know us first through Stream of Praise Music Ministry, a Chinese worship ministry whose songs are sung in churches around the world. I serve there as a worship pastor and video producer, and our team shoots every one of its music videos. Together those videos have passed 1.2 billion views on YouTube. We bring that same team and that same standard to every wedding.

What we specialize in is capturing the whole day, and everyone in it. We believe marriage is more than a contract. It is a covenant, and we want to film that to its core. A wedding is the one day in a couple’s life when all of these people will be gathered in the same place: family, friends, the people who raised them and the people who grew up beside them, all there to witness two people commit their lives to each other. That gathering will never happen again in quite the same way. So we film the couple, and we also film the faces around them.

Faith is what sets us apart. To us a wedding is a sacred day, and we treat it that way from the first conversation to the final edit. We serve couples of every background, and every one of them gets that same care.

What I am most proud of is that our work travels by word of mouth. People recommend us because of what they have seen us do, both at Noble Visual and at Stream of Praise.

What’s next?
We are looking forward to the new year. The wedding world is changing, and the biggest change is content creation. Couples still want the film and the photographs. Now they also want the raw, in-the-moment clips they can share while the day is still fresh.

That is something we already do for a living. When we go on tour with Stream of Praise, we shoot raw moments on our phones and edit them the same day. We are bringing that same speed and that same eye to weddings through our content creation service.

We also want to partner with more wedding planners. Planners know their couples and their venues better than anyone, and working closely with them helps us serve our couples and our city better.

Pricing:

• content creator – $1650+
• wedding videography – $2850+
• wedding photography – $2850+

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.noblevisual.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noblevisual

Image Credits
noble visual