Tabrizi Productions, Farran Tabrizi

Written by Johanna Harlow Photography by Arabela Espinoza

For many, being on camera for the first time can be a nerve-racking experience. Finding oneself under the penetrating gaze of a camera lens might feel like staring down the barrel of a shotgun. Add to that the interrogation-room bright lights and pesky lapel mics with their tangling wires. Now try delivering your lines without looking like a deer in the headlights.

Fortunately, when business owners come to Tabrizi Productions for their branded video needs, they can expect a much more inviting environment. “On my sets, it’s not a ton of lights. It’s not a ton of crew running around,” Farran Tabrizi shares. “It’s not super overwhelming. It’s very stripped down…You want to make [people] feel comfortable and not intimidated by the process.” It also helps that Tabrizi isn’t the formidable type—arriving at jobs with a Spiketus Rex backpack, cheetah print sneakers, and a smile. Sometimes a pink jumpsuit, too.

The video producer and mother of two has carved out a niche for herself in the field of corporate video. The company sizes and industries of her clients vary almost as greatly as her ever-changing hair color, and she’s particularly popular among women entrepreneurs.

In the world of filmmaking, making videos on behalf of businesses isn’t considered as “glamorous” as narrative filmmaking, but Farran finds joy in her work. “Corporate might not sound sexy as far as video content is concerned,” Tabrizi concedes, “but when you get to the core of how a company started and how much passion is behind the product or service that they’re offering, it’s kind of the same thing at the end of the day.”

Tabrizi’s forté is the documentary-style interview. After filming, she combs through footage for bite-size quotes with founders, team leads, and clients, then integrates these into testimonials and brand overviews, origin stories, and company culture videos.

Step one to a strong docu-style interview? Don’t hold too tightly to scripted lines. “Scripts (or an outline) are great, but those are really just a baseline to make sure an interview stays on track,” she explains. “A Q&A [reveals] things in a different way about a company or allows them to rephrase it in a different way.” Memorizing lines can aggravate stiffness, she notes, because people tend to focus on getting every word correct rather than embracing the emotion behind the lines. If done well, interview sessions should put founders at ease because now “they’re having a conversation with a person and not a lens.”

Tabrizi also brings a genuine interest in learning from everyone she meets. “I love hearing people’s stories and finding what lights them up,” she shares. “There is so much to learn from people—from their experiences.”

The filmmaker has encountered quite the variety of projects throughout her vocational journey. As a high schooler, she created B movie horror films with her friends and co-founded a business that offered event coverage services to schools in her area. After graduating from San Francisco State, she spent a stint in Pixar’s short films department, before transitioning into the public safety realm, recording everything from taser and firearms trainings to officer survival stories. After that, she created animated educational videos for Study.com.

Upon taking her production company from side hustle to full-time job, she continued expanding her range of fields, venturing into the self-driving car industry with Velodyne Lidar and nonprofit work with Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. As a woman in a male-dominant industry, she’s also quite popular with women-run groups like the Tress Club, skinSALVATION, Conferences for Women, and the Being Boss podcast. Recently, Tabrizi launched an online DIY video course, equipping entrepreneurs to generate their own video content.

Tabrizi considers all her work storytelling, with branded videos showing the human side of business, but she has also dabbled in documentary filmmaking. Her feature-length documentary Music Driven covers the unsung heroes of today’s underground rock and roll scene. To acquire footage for the project, Tabrizi and her then boyfriend, now husband, Ashton planned a classic American road trip in a not-so-conventional orange limo. “That’s our passion,” Tabrizi smiles. “Ashton is a musician. And I just love music and rock and roll.” (If there was any doubt, their sons are named after iconic rock stars Axl and Ace).

On their trip across 25-plus states, they recorded the Velcro Pygmies, Betty Hates Everything, Asphalt Valentine, and 47 other bands on and off the stage. “The whole premise of the documentary was to prove that rock and roll is not dead,” Tabrizi says. “It’s just harder to find. It’s not mainstream like it once was.” She leans forward, “Mark my words, I’ll be on tour shooting another rock documentary someday. I live for that!”

Meanwhile, Tabrizi will continue acing the corporate video game: her branded videos will continue elevating businesses to the next level as surely as she will keep rocking out to Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. C