Ridge Films

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Ridge Films Where the tech is too fiddly. The setup makes you look amature or you can't stand watching yourself back..

Ridge Films provide professional video studio, installed on your desk and coaching to grow your business. With Ridge Films, you invest in purposeful videos, that drive new business. Each video product has it’s own goal, which aligns with your marketing efforts and gets your audience think, feel or do. You gain incredible audience insights to help nurture and build quality leads. So conquer your marketing challenges and learn how to become a better video marketer with Ridge Films.

Somebody on your next webinar will have one earbud in while they do something else.That's who I build the structure for....
19/10/2026

Somebody on your next webinar will have one earbud in while they do something else.

That's who I build the structure for. If they can still tell where we're up to, everyone can.

So say it out loud as you go. First point. Any questions? Great, let's move on. It feels repetitive to you, and it's what keeps them with you.

I used to sit in a networking group with a panel be**er who closed every presentation with the same tagline. Week after week. In the end a room of about 50 people said the last word back to him.

Swipe for the three parts and what goes in each.

It's a framework, not a bible. The people eating the cake don't care how it was made.

In 2019 I stopped doing sales meetings in person. Pretty much overnight.I had a wife, two kids, and a week full of coffe...
18/10/2026

In 2019 I stopped doing sales meetings in person. Pretty much overnight.

I had a wife, two kids, and a week full of coffees, meetings and hours of commuting. I'd burnt out. So everything moved to Zoom, and we'd work out the kinks as we went.

It saved an enormous amount of time. It also showed me something I didn't like.

I was having sales conversations worth thousands of dollars over a crappy we**am and a bad microphone, with the printer in the background. None of it matched the price I was asking.

So we fixed a proper studio to the desk. Lights, camera, microphone, all dialled in and permanently connected to the computer. We built two.

I thought driving to every meeting was just what serious sales cost. It wasn't. And once the setup was ready before I sat down, I stopped thinking about how I looked at all.

That desk is where the Desktop Studio started.

17/10/2026

Our first studio kit was small enough to pack away.

Pull it out, plug it in, record, pack it up again. Flexible. Low commitment. Easy to sell, I thought.

It didn't work. Too many steps, and not enough wow. A studio you have to put together every time never gives you the confidence of one that's just there.

So we retired it. Proper DSLR camera, key light, glamour light, background lighting, a three-in-one teleprompter.

A setup like that can't be fiddled with, so it had to be fixed in place. Which meant installing it properly ourselves, and coaching people so they actually used it.

I thought portable was the selling point. Permanent was.

16/10/2026

Dad had a VHS camera around 1980, taking over from the Super 8.

It was enormous. Shoulder-mounted, a huge zoom lens, a cable running to a separate recording deck. Carrying it was like carrying a suitcase with a strap.

To me it was Dad's gear. Adult stuff. Nothing to do with me.

Then one day I found it set up on a tripod, Dad off doing one of his hundred other jobs. So I had a go. Zoomed in. Zoomed out.

That's when it landed. Wherever I pointed the lens, that's what got captured. Wherever I focused, I was telling my story.

Forty-odd years later it's still the first decision on any video. Not the gear. What you point it at.

16/10/2026

I was walking down the road in Marrickville and a bloke pointed straight at me. "Chris Schwager."

He told me his name and it clicked. We went to school together. Thirty years ago.

He didn't recognise me from school. He recognised me from my videos. First thing he said was "I watch your videos. They're good."

That was the whole review. They're good.

What stayed with me is that he knew me and I didn't know him. He'd been following along and I had no idea he was there.

Meanwhile the video you've been sitting on needs one more edit. Or you can't quite say it like that yet.

Nobody is watching that closely. They're just getting to know you, and they can't do that with a video you never posted.

14/10/2026

People kept turning up to sales calls with Byron's team saying "Byron said this, Byron said that."

Byron runs a digital agency. So he asked the obvious question. How do they know I said any of that?

They'd watched five to ten of his videos before they got on the call.

This is the same Byron who skipped drama class as a kid. He'd throw a sick day to stay off a stage. He told me he's not an influencer and doesn't have a big following. Some days he posts, looks at the likes and thinks nothing's going on here.

Something was going on. People were arriving at a first meeting already feeling like they knew him.

A video that asks for nothing looks like it's doing nothing. No enquiry, no click, nothing to count. So the temptation is to bolt "call us" onto the end of every one.

Don't. Give people something useful and leave it there. Then do it again.

You're not posting to get the sale. You're posting so that when they do call, it isn't a cold one.

13/10/2026

I once built a product that YouTube killed.

It was called Clive. Around 2009 we'd film a business owner on green screen, then sit them on top of their own website. No video player. Just them, standing on the page, talking to you.

Cutting edge at the time. I thought the tech was the breakthrough.

Then YouTube grew up and everyone had a smartphone in their pocket. Free video you could embed anywhere. That was that. We wound it up around 2012.

But a couple of years of putting business owners in front of a camera showed me something I wasn't looking for.

They were terrified.

Quality never came into it. The fear of putting themselves out there stopped them first.

And what got them through wasn't talent. It was a controlled room and repetition. Record, delete, repeat. Faster. Slower. Smile more.

The product died. The skill didn't.

You're not bad on camera. You're overloaded.

I've watched hundreds of people freeze the moment the camera switches on.Every time, the fix wasn't more preparation.A c...
12/10/2026

I've watched hundreds of people freeze the moment the camera switches on.

Every time, the fix wasn't more preparation.

A client of mine tried the opposite of a script first. No structure at all. He listened back to a jumbled mess of ums that needed a ton of editing before it was usable. So he did what everyone does next and swung to the other extreme. Script it all, memorise it, control every word.

Neither end works. Swipe for what sits in the middle.

And if you use a teleprompter, keep it. Just change what's on it. Your intro line, your key messages as bullets, your close.

09/10/2026

Somebody always gets right to the end. Video's done, edited, looks good. Then right before they hit publish: "Nah. I'll look like an idiot. What will people think."

Nobody talks about that part. All the work, all the editing, and the moment that actually decides anything happens after the camera's already off.

It's not vanity. It's the same loop running three thousand times a day, asking you to judge yourself before anyone else gets the chance.

That discomfort isn't a sign to stop. A part of your brain actually grows every time you do something uncomfortable and go through with it anyway, the same part that keeps your mind sharp as you get older.

Feel it. Post it anyway.

07/10/2026

Someone's followed you for years. Then they actually need you, a plumber, whatever it is you do. So they go looking.

They land on your site, and there's nothing there. Words about what you do. No sign anyone's home.

All that time getting to know you, and the site forgets it the moment they land.

We caught ourselves doing exactly that. So we built real search into our own site. Not a blog box that only checks the blog. Something that actually goes looking for the answer.

It's not content you're short on. It's a site that treats someone who already knows you like a stranger.

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The Rocks, NSW

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