Film and video majors Corey Martin and Michael Martin are not brothers, though their shared last name has caused some confusion ever since they met during their freshman year of high school in Novi, Mich.

“That’s the weird thing, is that we met because we had the same last name, but we’re not brothers, right?” Michael says to Corey, who in turn confirms the fact.

Though the pair may not be related, they do share the same entrepreneurial spirit as proud new co-producers of their own self-sustaining production company, Rapid Media LLC.

“Before we even came here we were like, ‘Oh, it’d be cool if we could have a production company after college,’” Corey said.

With Michael manning the cameras and Corey editing and managing the website, the breadth of their company now extends to the production of small-scale videos for clients. They said they hope to one day do more than just video production.

Eventually, Corey wants to have a hand in creating what he calls “the Google of visual information,” applying the way Google analyzes information for relevancy to the realm of object identification.

More simply put, instead of a search engine that finds trends in words, Corey wants to create a search engine that can find visual trends as well.

“But still, the visual thing is a long way off,” he said. “When we started talking about the company, we thought about doing that, but then it wasn’t practical – we have to get more experience on a smaller-scale project.”

So the Grand Valley State University students founded Rapid Media, which was born out of “one million different ideas,” and set in motion when Corey realized the only way to have complete creative freedom was build their own company.

They said the most grueling part was pulling the company together without knowing whether or not they were even going to have clients, spending hours in front of computer screens and on telephones, researching and writing proposals while building up the confidence to go through with it all.

“It was difficult just getting it all to come together,” Michael said, “… Because we want to do it the right way, you know, incorporate ourselves into an LLC – a limited liability company, or partnership.”

Unlike other production companies, they hope to be unique in not only their self-sustainability, but also with their spontaneous approach to filmmaking.

“It’s much more difficult to end up with a cookie-cutter, cheesy piece if you’re not exactly going for something,” Michael said. “When you just kind of go for it and piece it together, you have a lot of tools at your disposal and I like that.”

He said his approach to filming is, for lack of a better term, intrusive – but he doesn’t mean it in a bad way.

“I feel like if you go to almost that edge where you’re intrusive but you still make them feel comfortable, then it just gives the video a completely different feel,” he said.

Michael and Corey have already produced a short promotional film for Blandford Nature Center and are working on a longer documentary about the workers and volunteers. They also worked on a project for an Ann Arbor musician.

While the intention of many young videograhers is to move up the ranks of a company, Corey and Michael want to spend that time building their own.

“The huge thing about the film industry is that you have to start from the bottom,” Corey said. “You have to start with running chores and getting people coffee and we’d rather spend that time figuring out how we can get other people to get us coffee.”

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