More than in any other year, 2016 has been about growth.
But before we can talk about 2016, we have to go back.
In 2005, my wife Carrie and I started our company. We didn’t know what we were doing. And we didn’t even own a camera. For eight years after that, we operated as a mom-and-pop video shop, working out of our living room and traveling the country together telling stories and sometimes sleeping in our car (shortandhat.com).
Hoptocopter 1.0 made for some amazing times and memories.
Seth and Carrie Schaeffer in 2011
Then everything changed in 2013 when we realized Hoptocopter could be more. Our friends are artists in their own rights and business people whose brains churn with strategies for creating somethings out of nothings. We found we shared visions of moving forward with a couple of our friends. We sat around plenty of campfires with them and talked about our dreams for the future. Many of those visions aligned, and in those campfire conversations, spurred by our excitement and our hope for a better, more team-oriented future, Hoptocopter 2.0 was born.
We invited those friends to join our team, rented a tiny, 600 square-foot studio apartment space, and finally moved our production gear out of our house for the first time in eight years. Two years later, after finding ourselves (again) tripping over camera gear, we moved to a 3000 square-foot warehouse with enough room to build real production sets.
And now here we are in 2016, working at Hoptocopter 2.0 and surrounding ourselves with more amazing people. The single most important factor that has contributed to Hoptocopter’s growth is our team. We are fortunate to have five more people join our team, doubling our staff size. We never set out to grow Hoptocopter for growth’s sake. Rather, we keep finding ourselves surrounded by more amazing people whom we want to invite on the journey. And we’re humbled that they want to be a part of what we're doing.
That's really our hope for the future--that no matter what we do or where we go, that we will continue to find and tell amazing stories with our friends who also happen to be our coworkers.
From our family to yours, happy New Year from Hoptocopter!
WHAT WE did in 2016
Below is a taste of some of the projects we worked on this year.
HOW A VIDEO IS MADE AT HOPTOCOPTER
We realized we're so busy creating stories for others that we hadn't explained our video process to our customers. This video gives an overview of how the process works at Hoptocopter.
OUR REEL
We also carved out some time to put together an industrial reel of the manufacturing-based projects we've done over the last couple of years.
RETRAX
We loved creating this video for RETRAX Truck Bed Covers. We got to romp all around Colorado and Utah--from mountains to deserts and everything in between.
cherry creek schools cte program
We partnered with Cherry Creek Schools to highlight their growing Career and Technical Education program for high school kids.