Meet Matthew Wagner of Virtue Visuals in North Phoenix

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Wagner.

Matthew, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My creative journey started out, like a lot of people, by making cringy but hilarious YouTube videos with my friends all throughout junior high and high school! During my gap year, I got my first job at In-N-Out and quickly realized how unfulfilling corporate work was for me (especially fast food). I had a creative drive that wasn’t being met. So (thanks to my new friend, My Own Money), I bought my first camera, a refurbished T5i with a nifty fifty and started diving into videography! I had no idea if I wanted to make a career out of it, but the more I shot, the more I fell in love with shooting + editing. So, I prayed that if God wanted me to start doing it for work that he would bring me clients to fill that need. I decided to just start putting out weekly content, and after four videos CityView Church asked me to make a video for them, and a month later asked me to consistently make videos for them. A total answer to prayer! I quit In-N-Out the next week and have been a full-time freelance videographer ever since then! So, that’s how it all started, my videos for CityView gained a lot of traction on Facebook and I got a lot of new clients through the church. Summer 2018, I started a single member LLC under the name Virtue Visuals with the goal of making creative videos that inspire. However, I’m still working on the logos + website and will officially launch in October.

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?
I don’t think anyone ever has a smooth road along their creative journey. Every road is paved with (for a time) uncertainty, insecurity, self-doubt, and discouragement. I had a film class one time that I had to make a narrative film (not my specialty) every other week, and I made some films that were just absolute garbage. I tried working with a team, I tried taking control and doing it all on my own, but it seemed like nothing I did would turn out good. That’s the most discouraged and depressed I’ve ever been in my life. But it’s only because I had a wrong view of failure. I had always had the mindset that being a creator means never making anything worse. That if I was a creator, everything I did was ultra-creative and the best thing anyone had ever seen. I took on my failures to mean that I was a bad creator.

But then, I read a book by Erwin McManus called The Artisan Soul, and something in there really changed the way I thought about failure. He said that “creativity is born of risk and refined from failure… we cannot create without risk… we cannot live to create and be surprised that we have traveled through failure.” It was then that my mindset changed from “if I happen to make a mistake, I’ll learn from it so that I never make a mistake again” to realizing that failure is part of the creative process. You can’t make something great without a whole lot of failure coming before it. A simple truth, but something that totally changed the way I think about my work when it actually set in.

Virtue Visuals – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I love making creative videos that inspire people, which is why I love working with CityView Church! I’m a drummer so all of my videos are heavily influenced by music and always cut to the beat (shout out to Baby Driver for blowing my mind). I like to consider myself a versatile videographer, able to shoot in a lot of different genres and styles for whatever best suits the project. However, I specialize in travel-style montage edits with a lot of transitions and quick cuts. So, because of that, I’ve done several promo videos for a lot of different companies including photobooth businesses, restaurants (such as Tomaso’s and Grimaldi’s), and creative agencies. But above all, I love doing creative music videos!

I’m a creative perfectionist, so I pride myself in my editing. I love meeting new people and working with my clients, so I always want them to be happy with the final project, which is why I spend a ton of time making sure every little detail is perfect.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Probably, my favorite project that I’ve done is the Recalculating series for CityView Church. It was something totally different than I usually do, but so fulfilling. It was a series of 7 interviews featuring members of the church sharing stories of how their life took a really hard turn. Stuff like growing up with a mom in prison, or getting cancer and having your husband leave you in the midst of it. However, instead of the cliche videos of how everything turned out in a perfect little bow, the interviewees shared how the situation is still hard and how God has been helping them endure the hardships and how they’ve grown through the trials. I feel like that’s a lot more relatable than finding perfect stories that end happily ever after. We’re all going through or have gone through hard times and it was really awesome to hear how many people were encouraged through those videos.

Two other notable mentions: I got to do a video at a marine training base and actually got in the planes and shot some marines jumping out of them. I would love to do more work with the military! And lastly, I got to do a video for my all-time favorite pizza spot, Grimaldi’s Pizzeria (through a company called Reel Taste), which was easily the most delicious shoot I’ve ever been on.

Pricing:

• Music videos start at $1,000, depending on complexity and shoot length
• Promo videos start at $1,000 for a 1-2 minute edit
• Weddings start at $2,000 + travel expenses

Contact Info:

• Website: virtuevisuals.com (should be up by the end of October!)
• Email: matthew@virtuevisuals.com
• Instagram: @mwvideography

Image Credit:
Bowen Moreno

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