It has been a very busy and rewarding year for us at Allusion Studios. Along with regular day to day business, I had many personal media projects that had been building up for years, and all of them just so happened to come to completion this year. Talk about everything hitting you at once! My educational DVD series, The Studio Edge Pro Audio Recording Series, was 3 years in the making for the first DVD alone, though it was supposed to be released over a year ago. Unaware of its eventual delay, I took on a 5 HD camera concert DVD and formed a label for its distribution. This project, The DeGrazia Centennial Concert, took over a year to edit, mix, and author, all outside my normal working hours at the studio. I was literally putting in 90-100 hour weeks throughout the entire year. And as you might have guessed, a few things got left by the side of the road just trying to keep up.
Luckily, I was not all alone in the trenches: Joe Gallegos took on more hours to help with the brunt of work that needed to be done; Chris Giambelluca came on as a second engineer and worked many sessions while I put other fires out; and Chase Welch came in as a university-sponsored intern and knocked it out of the park, and is now starting to take on recording sessions as an employee. My friend Bjorgvin also helped out this year, not only by filming some video blogs but also assisting with our marketing. He even did an article introducing The Studio Edge DVD to a popular audio blog. The latest addition to the Allusion family, Emily, came along through another school-sponsored internship program. At first I was not sure how we were going to utilize or manage another person, but after a few meetings, we came up with the idea of asking her to write a blog through the eyes of a new intern with no audio background while she was training. Not only have we seen a great response to her blog, but it has been an eye-opening view into someone who is just starting out in audio. This is something I will truly benefit from in order to tailor my educational DVD series to be understood by a beginner. It has also been a great feedback tool for me to see how I interact with clients and see what I can do better.
Since we have been so overwhelmed with projects this year, we spent many meetings trying to see how we can do better, lighten the load, and provide more services/options besides just stellar recording gear and great engineers. Having multiple heads in on the discussions has been extremely beneficial and I have already put into motion several tasks to move in an exciting new direction. I take customer service very seriously and want the best for my clients. If you have not filled out our short customer survey online, please do so. Your data will help us to better accommodate the needs of our clients and improve our services. You will have to wait just a little longer to see what we are implementing, but check our website often. It will be a musician’s game-changer. We will be updating several pages with new information as early as next week.
I want to thank all my clients for an excellent year. I also want to thank my employees for being with me through the most important time in Allusion Studios’ history. Your commitment and excellence has contributed greatly through a year of intense growing pains. It has been an honor to have you by my side. I am looking forward to the next year.
-Jim Pavett
