Studio Spotlight: Gear Seven

1. As we all prepare for our upcoming CreativeMornings Nashville event on “Failure” with Micah Smith, tell us a little bit about what Gear Seven does and when have you turned a failure into something great?

Gear Seven is a collective of story tellers but in short, is a production company based out of Deavor. We are a full scale creative team ranging from cinematography, animation, and graphics. We face failure every day. No amount of planning for any video shoot is going to stop the weather, or someone’s health or something as small as traffic. 

We shot a feature film called The Polar Bear Club this past winter in Minnesota during the Polar Vortex. The temperature was 40 below 0 the majority of the time we were out there and our actors were in their late 60’s. We were pretty sure the whole film was going to fail as none of us were prepared for this kind of weather. As we sat with the director and screenwriter, we realized that we needed to show these conditions because the reality of life in northern Minnesota was what we were selling and it would make our story believable. Despite the cold we powered through and ended up with what we believe is some of the best filmmaking we’ve ever accomplished. 

2. How did you folks start the company, how did you get on your feet?

Gear Seven was started during Kirk’s college career at Belmont. Interning and capturing anything and everything he could during his time there. Slowly began freelancing and working with other mentors, eventually getting his own projects. Those projects quickly grew too big for just a one-man band, which allowed Gear Seven to grow and become a team. It was slow growth for are a while, but I now believe we are doing the best work we ever have. It is crazy to see how far we have all progressed in the last 3 years. 

3. Explain your relationship with Deavor, our location sponsor. What are the benefits to having your home base within a co-working space?

Despite having an incredibly cool office environment which truly fuels the creative mind, Deavor is full of people who are looking for more than just a way to pay the bills. We have successful entrepreneurs and freelancers using their creative talents to make a living for themselves. All of whom bounce clients off of one another. If a graphic designer needs a photographer, it’s there. If the Ad Agency rep needs a branding video, it’s there. It’s kind of a one stop shop powerhouse of intelligent, hardworking people. 

4. Many of us have heard about Small Batch Presents. Give us a little insight to what Small Batch is and how it got started.

Small Batch Presents is a short film series that was created by Connor Carroll and Greg Frank (two of Deavor’s members). It pairs hand made (small batch) brands and emerging bands with each other in an effort to help expand an audience and foster relationships within a community. Artists and artisans do much more for each other than what we see of the surface. It started as an effort to showcase how cool Nashville is and use Gear Seven’s unique story telling style to create a piece of current content that was more insightful than “which cast member of New Girl are you”. Just an excuse to show amazing artwork, whether it’s a light fixture or a really good song. 

5. What type of video work are you at Gear Seven most excited about? What would be a dream project?

We work on a lot of music videos, shorts, and features so in all honesty, we are living our dream in a sense. I think if we had to pick something though, we would love to make a short film for a full length record. A music video for every song on a record resulting in one short film telling a full story. 

We want to say Thank You again to Gear Seven for graciously offering up their services for our event this month. If you want to learn more about Gear Seven check out their website, twitter, instagram, facebook & vimeo.