Behind the Lens and Beyond: Matt Case on Blending Creativity and Family Care

Summary

Matt Case, a videographer, shares his journey into video editing and shooting, which was inspired by his love for sports and creativity. He discusses his favorite projects and his current work as a producer and director. Matt also talks about his role as a parent and family caretaker. Nancy, Matt's mother, joins the conversation and shares her health journey, overcoming back pain through holistic methods. Matt emphasizes the importance of listening and having hope when supporting a loved one's recovery process.

Takeaways

Matt's passion for sports and creativity led him to pursue a career in video editing and shooting.
He has worked on various projects, including documentaries and reality TV programming.
In addition to his professional responsibilities, Matt is a parent and family caretaker.
Nancy's health journey inspired Matt to write a book on strength and conditioning training for seniors.
They emphasize the importance of listening and having hope when supporting a loved one's recovery process.

Chapters

00:00 Matt's Creative Journey: From Sports to Videography
02:55 Balancing Parenthood and a Career in Video Production
08:49 Writing a Book on Strength and Conditioning for Seniors
11:51 Nancy's Holistic Approach to Healing Back Pain

Transcript

leah (00:02)
so matt you are a videographer and i have heard exceptional reviews about your video editing skills can i ask what inspired you to get into this line of work and why is it meaningful to you

matt_case (00:17)
uh yeah it was a process of self discovery on the creative side for me i guess you would consider me a creative i'm not a good i do okay on the analytical side of things um but i started editing and and shooting in nashville and it was a result sort of an outgrowth of of sports and i love

sports grew up in a sports related family um wrestling football baseball and my dad was a coach and so when i was in my professional days and my twenties and thirties i started doing computer programming which which is kind of analytical but also created at the same time and a friend of mine who was sort of independently wealthy wanted me to come work for him and do some editing and shooting

and i had no experience in doing that and part of it was working with athletes and recording video for them with them to launch a sports league and i really enjoyed that creative process and you know involved sports it involved something that's creative and also semi analytical and um and editing was the same way you know it allowed me to get into creative detail

and that's really how i'm wired up me my parents kind of the same way sort of helped me discover that so yeah my background there just kind of grew out of a natural love for for both creative stuff and sports and then the company that i worked for in nashville high five entertainment that they helped me blow that up even more they were involved with a lot of music productions and more sports

actually motor sports and so i started cutting my teeth on the television side of things not just by biographies and um and and interviews and so that was really fun and then from there i just kept going down that you now chasing that rabbit hole and i just i became a producer and sort of director in those same fields and now i'm partner with a guy who did a lot of reality show programming they call it unscripted

um heart bridge media and we pitch t v shows to networks so that's what i'm doing right now as my day job

leah (02:55)
wow that is all really interesting experience and it sounds like a great mix of creative technical and analytical skills so that sounds really cool do you have a favorite project that you worked on

matt_case (03:08)
wow there's so many good ones

that's a tough question i wish you would have asked me that in the in the email um there's so many

matt_case (03:25)
it's hard for me to pick just one um there are you know there's there's the dock follows where you're following people in an environment that's very natural and unscripted those are great because you know it takes a lot of work because you're just shooting a lot and then i'll listen waiting for something to happen and then when it does you have to be ready so there's a big adrenal and rush to capture those moments

and those are fun to do on the editing side i love to push frames around they say and you know you have a little bit of control there with story and um and so those two worlds are you know compliment each other but in terms of a favorite project i'm trying to we did this project called god on earth a couple of years ago and there was sort of modern day indiana jones

who would find these biblical relics and stories and caves and u and these old manuscripts and nd he found paul's old anchor from his ship you know the missionary who was who was lost at sea for a while managed to find his way on to creep and this was you know bible days and we shot this presentation for the science channel and discovery science and they

wanted they wanted us to sort of tell this story with him in saudi arabia but not in sdariabecause we didn't have a budget for it the time so we did everything in california big mountain and it was him and his family climbing this mountain with our our crew and everyone was just a little bit nervous we had insurance but it was just an adventure that that's probably one of my favorite development projects

leah (05:08)
yea

matt_case (05:24)
we pitched to a network is a lot of fun

leah (05:28)
well that sounds really exciting and i could ask you a million more questions about that specifically but i also know in addition to your professional responsibilities you are also a parent and a family caretaker can you tell me a bit about your family what's a day in your life like

matt_case (05:45)
oh well i got married a little later than most and we decided to have a family my my wife bless her heart she's she's a little bit younger than me and a lot more courageous and she agreed that we were going a have a family at the beginning we said let's go for three to five kids we had no idea what we're getting ourselves into and so i've got six four and a two year old and

matt_case (06:16)
now getting married later and having kids later is as a mixed blessing you have the wisdom you know a knowledge that you've had to this point that you can instill in them but you don't have the energy that you would if you're you know younger um so that's that's the every day dynamic is sort of balancing my energy levels with theirs and then you know trying to also give them the wisdom that i have so they don't make the same mistakes

i guess that's probably every parents hope m and then on the other side on the care taking side um you know my mom is approaching her eighties and she's very healthy thankfully but she did have some issues a few years ago that she had to battle and we you know we talked extensively about what the solutions might be there

pretty serious she had some really bad back issues that were affecting her quality of life and so my brother and i put our heads together you know she she sought out the best care she went to some you know major institutions to try and figure out what what was best for her and she didn't want to do what the doctors were prescribing because they were they sounded too scary for her and in that process she started to discover things that she

you know she was doing wrong all her life and m and she would share she always sends us an email about these things whether it's a new supplement or a new protein shake or or new exercise and my brother and i were getting a little overwhelmed but it was a new process of self discovery and she was finding solutions and so we would continue to encourage her in that process and analogy s completely healthy and we're just like who

leah (08:00)
uh uh

matt_case (08:16)
um and you know that was a remarkable thing to see her do

leah (08:21)
thank you so much for sharing about your family sounds like a very busy household good household that a busy household and i'm so glad to hear the improvement progress your mother has made that's truly incredible and it had led you to write a book write called give me strength strength and conditioning training for seniors over sixty how does a videographer transition into an author how did that happen can you walk me through

matt_case (08:49)
sure so i'm assuming a lot of people found side hustles and moonlight ing gigs during the pandemic i was no exception so that was outgrowth of that the production world sort of shut down during during those years and i was taking the mini van into a routine check up and i think we had to have some tire put on so i had some extended time to spend in the in the shop

repair shop and i just started working and i was on you tube and found his add on how to write your own books and so i kept going down that rabbit hole and a couple days later i purchased the course and learned how to write and in that course they teach you how to pick a niche that you like and passionate about the first one was parenting that i wanted to go into i really wanted to become this is

leah (09:29)
huh

matt_case (09:49)
brand i was calling myself the unicorn dad and i i trademark bad got you know graphic web design and all that stuff and started going down that and found out soon thereafter that that nice is pretty saturated um and in that process i you know shared with the coach who was part of the part of the course training

leah (09:54)
yeah

matt_case (10:19)
and they said well why don't you pick another thing that you're passionate about that may be more sellable or has has less saturation and that led me to the fitness book for seniors because my mom at the same time was going through a lot of that stuff and actually on the back end of her sort of her struggle in her journey she was having a lot of victories that she shared with me so that is how ended up in that niche and always

sort of had an affinity for older adults growing up to and so that and fitness of course um in a sports you know sports oriented family and that would just seem like a natural thing for me to write about

leah (11:05)
well that's awesome and sounds like your mom was definitely a large inspiration for your book and i think your mom is actually here with us today right

matt_case (11:14)
she is she's actually visiting from from wisconsin where she's from she's helping us with the kids a little bit so do you want me to go get her

leah (11:21)
that would be amazing

matt_case (11:23)
one second

she'll be here in just a

leah (11:41)
all right and her name is it nancy nancy okay

matt_case (11:44)
an yeh

leah (11:49)
hello

matt_case (11:51)
this is leah

leah (11:54)
nancy it's wonderful to meet you thank you so much for coming on

matt_case (11:57)
oh you're welcome glad to do it

leah (12:00)
well amazing i will jump right in it's currently recording but we'll edit it at the end so no pressure but he nancy thank you so much for joining us can you tell us a bit about your health story and how it all be again

matt_case (12:05)

i guess the the beginning of it was when i sold my condo i sold my house to move into a condo and was a lot of work involved from a nine room house to a like just a two bedroom condo and there was a lot of work to do and i just did it on my own took me time but through the that process i discovered once i moved that my back

was something was really wrong with my back and i couldn't walk very far i couldn't take my normal to my walks and i couldn't stand in line in a store without having to move back shift back and forth something was wrong with my back so i checked with my regular doctor had x rays is a long story short i wound up at um um

clinic for an assessment in addition to my own i keep looking at myself but i don't want to do that i will get you i keep looking well anyway i'm nervous

leah (13:41)
you're doing amazing

matt_case (13:44)
okay god through all the consultations that i had they were m suggesting searchery um drugs and i just just scared me i didn't want to go that route so i started researching on line of course and um decided to go a wholistic way in an exercise way si started an exercise program online

four seniors and set up a daily well it didn't didn't initially it wasn't daily i tried to make it daily but it just didn't happen but over a course of time i guess it was maybe three years with the exercise i did do some physical therapy i did some puncture i did some disc

compression all holistic um un traditional medical ways of correcting what i needed to correct it i'm just whatever i did the combination worked and i just so thrill that i don't have any pain now i can i can walk again i do have a little problem with my left like um kind of a drop foot sort of thing but i can live with that there's no it's not painful and

o it's um it's a joy to be able to carry on life without having pain and i think the real crunch came a couple days ago i took a spell and at landed on my shoulder and my my right shoulder i'm right handed and elbow and um i feel great nothing nothing is broken it was a little sore but i could

matt_case (15:42)
deal with that and i'm just i think that's proof um that what i've been doing is really working i do stretches every morning i do a workout every day about a thirty minute workout and various you know low impact exercises and

leah (16:03)
yeah thank you so much for sharing your experiences your back pain sounds like it was very intense and was limiting the way that you wanted to live and i am so glad to hear that you were feeling much better now you mentioned being a little scared to go the traditional route that your doctors were recommending you mentioned surgery drugs injections can you speak a little bit as to why those options sounded scary to you and why you were motivated to seek an alternative route

matt_case (16:12)
yes

well first of all the surgery was not a guarantee um you hear stories of people that had a surgery it hasn't helped and so that you know cutting in like that and fusing my back it just didn't sound something i wanted to do and injections might have been a possibility but i wanted to know it's kind of

last resort um and i did refuse medication so i'm not on any medication and

no if that answer is your quest some of those work or for cable it's just you know there are are cideiffic to a lot of to anything that you're putting into your body you know anything that you're doing to affect your your skeletal system you know to the drugs that you put or the vitomnsthat you put in your body so i think those are the fears that you had mostly the unknown right and previously to this particular health journey

matt_case (17:44)
i had been given a medication for my bones and i found out that medication for a condition that i had and i found out that that medication was bad for my bones so i slowly went off of that and i looked for other ways to strengthen my bones and i thought the exercise was was a good one and the food my diet changed considerably because i went to more play based diet and

took in a lot more i was more cognizant of the good nutrition that i really needed although i've always been good eater but you now that just made it more intense for me it's a combination of everything i think the exercise the the physical therapy things that i had done and the nutrition so and a better outlook and

leah (18:43)
yeah

matt_case (18:44)
or excitement in my life

leah (18:46)
right and i want to clarify that care is not advocating people to go against the medical advice of professionals however as you mentioned i do think there is a much more holistic approach to health care that people can take and should look into and as a patient you retain autonomy and your medical decision making process and i'm really glad that these alternative methods have been successful for you once you started this exercise regiment were you seeing

results immediately or did it take a bit of time and dedication to start seeing improvements in your pain

matt_case (19:22)
i can't really say i just noticed that i started having more energy and i can't say when that happened but i had more energy and was not you know exhausted by the end of the day and just something caught on i caught on that hey something different what i'm doing must be working and it helped to read success stories of other people online that had overcome a differ

cult situation by you know trying some un traditional methods and i think these un traditional methods are becoming more traditional now

leah (20:03)
right yeah so reading other people's stories motivated you throughout the process do you have any advice for someone who is in your position may be six months ago or a year ago someone who is experiencing pain of some sort who needs encouragement what would you say to that person

matt_case (20:23)
well do you research on exercise and also try to find a program that you can work with and i start out slow don't expect to do great things in just a short amount of time and keep yourself motivated a little bit at a time if you can find a

a guide book i would like to promote my son's book who just wrote a book and give me strength and all the exercises in that book are things that i do not not not every exercise obviously every day but i pick and choose the ones that work for me and i think it's plus in the book he gives reasons to do these things and how

leah (20:49)
no

matt_case (21:13)
your movements affect everything in your life and it contribute to over overall well being

leah (21:22)
yeah nancy thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us i am so grateful that you have come on and spoken with us today and mat i'll turn that question back to you as someone witnessing a loved one experience a painful process what advice would you have to a family member out there who is trying to support a loved one in their recovery process

matt_case (21:46)
um listen listen well i think that's the most important thing listen with the intent to understand um because obviously if you're caretaking or about to cross that threshold into that into that world you have to you have to listen to what the problems are that your loved ones are experiencing um and then like like my mom said just

continue to research in find there's resources out there there's lots of lots of books lots of websites that that help you explore what's best for you and you know it's a journey it's it's something that in the book i talk about having hope i think that's the most important thing as people start to get older a lot of them lose hope and there's no reason to because you know medicine health re

sources that are available these days it's amazing and there's no reason why we shouldn't be hopeful for the future and taking care of our bodies and my mom's proof that you know if you take control and you start to you know care about your health and i told her we used to get about an email a day from you all these new things that you would find out and it was it was fun eventually

but i got to know what through those emails articles that she was sent us what's really bothering her and what you know what she wanted to explore and you know she was concerned and so i took ou now my brother and i took it upon ourselves to listen and talk with her about things that scared her things that made her happy and excited and i think that's the most important thing that you can do as as a care giver

leah (23:46)
listening and have hope i love that some incredible advice mat nancy thank you so much for joining me i hope that hearing your story is helpful to people out there who are in similar situations and again thank you so much for being here

matt_case (23:47)
yeah

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