With a passion for capturing milestones, DLC Productions puts together videography, photography, and other multimedia into one production group that’s all about telling stories and sharing them with others. 

 

Currently with a focus on videography, DLC Productions’ portfolio consists mainly of event videos and corporate AVPs but it’s still on the path of finding its full identity. While the company is versatile, William, owner of DLC Productions and Tapebuds, admits that he’s still figuring a few things out.

 

Even while on a much needed vacation away from the city, William took the time to talk to us over Zoom about found family, dealing with difficult clients, and learning how to run a business. 

 

WIP (William-In-Progress)

 

As of the moment, DLC Productions is really just William plus freelancers that he met through a workshop and a Facebook group. But just because the crew is an assortment of talents with their own stories to tell, that doesn’t mean they aren’t close. In fact, the boys of DLC feel like a family; they’ve even celebrated Christmas together. 

 

It isn’t just this familial bond that ties them together, though. William told us that he treats this job as a mentorship, too. Instead of simply giving out orders, he says that he prefers teaching and working with others, which includes giving advice on working with difficult clients.

 

His approach to clients that make him want to rip his hair out? Stay professional. At the end of the day, “work is work”, says William, and that it isn’t worth the stress or his mental health to try and argue with them. According to him, doing so would also affect his relationship with his juniors, and he wouldn’t want that, not when he values how much the community looks out for each other.

 

Aside from his relationships with his peers, William spoke to us about his relationship with work. For example, the reason he’s at the beach and not at Nook: he needed to relax. Because as lucky and blessed he feels to have a job that is also his passion, he needed to take time off, clear his head for a bit, and realign himself on what he wanted to do with DLC Productions and his other project, Tapebuds, which is a video tape (yes, video tapes, those chunky rectangles that people used to use for their home videos and movies) restoration service. 

 

Right now, his mind is set on trying to find a balance between being a creative and learning how to be a businessman, especially now that he wants to solidify his business and actually hire people full-time. 

 

Fast Talk with William

 

While we got a pretty good look at how William’s been doing so far, we asked him a few quick-ish questions so we could get a better understanding of the man himself.

 

Which do you prefer: analog or digital?

 

That’s a hard question. [chuckles] Recently, what I like about analog is it’s more difficult to use, it’s more precious. Unlike now 一 people now would just record them going out, they’re in the banyo 一 [with] film, people don’t take their camera to the banyo and take 25 selfies. With film, diba, you only have 36 shots so the nice thing about analog is when you transfer it, these are memories that are very, very, very important, and you know it’s important. Whereas [with] digital, it’s too much. Like [in] Netflix, there’s so much that you think it’s good but there’s too much on Netflix that you don’t know what to watch… The pro is it’s easier but iba pa rin ang analog. Like now, printing your picture and giving it to someone is special already. Technically, it may not be superior but there’s this personal charm that analog has and digital doesn’t. 

 

If your life was a movie, mini series, or TV show 一 imagine a VHS tape that has a digital equivalent 一 what title would you give it?

 

Of my life? I don’t know, I’m sorry. [laughs] I wish I had an answer but I don’t. TBA nalang. 

 

You were talking about expanding your one man team into a mini family, what are three attributes that you would look for in the candidates you’d hire?

 

Hardworking, not spoiled [in a way that they’re] open to ideas, follows what I want. [The attributes of] “following what I want” and “[being] open to ideas” can contradict each other but that’s why I’d want to hire them because I want to have a different perspective on something. I want to see how they would do it, and if it’s a good idea, I’d take it. But I think of all of them, the one thing I want is hardworking [members/teammates].

 

What do you do to overcome fatigue?

 

In 2018, I focused more on my production, so taking less gigs but the bigger ones… and not being scared to get someone else to do the job that I usually do, which is editing… Kahit I’m home lang, I watch Netflix一 Even before the pandemic, I’d sleep the entire day or eat somewhere I like, drive somewhere.

 

Pandemic shoots and future plans

 

Much like many creatives out there, the pandemic did a number on William and DLC Productions. 

 

For starters, there weren’t as many shoots, and because of that, overall operations of the group were disrupted. When they did have gigs, everyone needed to be tested for safety purposes and the crew couldn’t all gather in one car unless they’d been swabbed and proved to be negative. It clearly made the entire process more tedious for everyone, especially the boys of DLC.

 

Because of the smaller number of jobs, William also shared that he actually had plans to hire an in-house marketing associate so DLC Production could get more clients, which in turn would help him with his long-term plans of hiring more people. So far, this is still in the works.

 

As for Tapebuds, things are pretty much the same: people still drop off their tapes in the same place and their happy customers continue to send touching messages about how happy they are that they get to watch their old videos after such a long time. Unfortunately, William stated that once the pandemic ends, Tapebuds will likely shut down due to the amount of time spent on the service. 

 

For now, William is focused on shooting personal moments proficiently with DLC Productions, and restoring personally shot moments skillfully with Tapebuds, and we love that for him.

 

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