Today we’d like to introduce you to Rhett.
Rhett, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I got started pretty simply. I loved making videos, picked up a camera, and started saying yes to just about anything that gave me an opportunity to create.
What started as small projects eventually became Iconic Media Studios, the production company I built here in Austin. For years, I was doing a little bit of everything: shooting, editing, producing, traveling, working directly with clients, figuring out budgets and learning the business side of creativity mostly by doing it.
There wasn’t really a master plan in the beginning. A lot of it was just trying to get better with every project and slowly raising the bar for what I thought we were capable of.
Over time, the projects became bigger and the clients became more ambitious. I went from primarily working on my own to building crews, traveling around the country and internationally, and producing work for brands, organizations and people across commercial, branded content, events and documentary storytelling.
Austin has been home base through all of it.
One of the biggest turning points was meeting my now business partner, Gabriel Martin. Gabe and I had worked together for years before Sunday Studios existed. We realized pretty quickly that our strengths complemented each other. He naturally gravitated toward production, cinematography and everything happening on set, while I found myself increasingly focused on directing the bigger creative picture, post-production, storytelling and working with clients.
For a while, we were essentially operating like a studio without actually calling ourselves one.
That eventually became Sunday Studios.
Sunday Studios is an Austin-based video production and creative studio focused on commercial campaigns, brand films, documentary-style storytelling, events and post-production. The goal is to stay small and founder-led while being capable of producing work at a much larger level.
A lot of Sunday Studios was born from looking at what we had built over the previous several years and asking what we actually wanted the next version of it to look like.
We didn’t want to build a huge traditional agency. We also didn’t want to just be two guys with cameras taking whatever project came through the door.
We wanted something in between: a creative studio where the people you hire are actually the people thinking about the work, making it and caring about the final product.
We’ve been fortunate to work on projects ranging from national events and brand campaigns to founder stories, documentaries and films for companies across the country. Every one of those projects has helped shape what Sunday Studios is becoming.
And honestly, we’re still building it.
That’s probably the most exciting part of where we are right now. Sunday Studios isn’t the story of something that is finished. We’re actively figuring out what we want the studio to be known for, developing our voice, creating more of our own work and being much more intentional about the projects and people we want to work with.
The last several years were about learning how to make great work and build a sustainable production business.
This next chapter is about building a studio and a body of work that feels distinctly ours.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not. Like a lot of creative businesses, most of the learning happened while we were already moving.
Early on, one of the biggest challenges was trying to do everything myself. I was shooting, editing, producing, communicating with clients, building estimates and figuring out the business side at the same time. Saying yes to almost every opportunity helped me grow quickly, but it also taught me that being busy and building the right business are two very different things.
There have been more all-nighters than I can count, flights across the world and back while still editing multiple projects, and plenty of moments where the only option was to figure it out and keep moving. Anyone who works in production knows this is not really an industry you stay in unless you genuinely love it. The work can demand a lot from you, your team and everyone you trust to help bring a project across the finish line.
But that is also what makes it rewarding. Finishing a massive project, seeing the team deliver under pressure and knowing the work helped a client accomplish something meaningful is still an incredible feeling.
As the projects got bigger, the challenge became learning how to scale without losing the quality of the work. That meant building a trusted crew, learning to delegate, creating better systems and becoming more selective about the clients and projects we take on.
That experience is a big reason Sunday Studios exists today. We wanted to take everything we learned from years of working in video production in Austin and build a more intentional creative studio around it.
We are still figuring parts of it out, but now we are much clearer about the kind of work we want to make, the people we want to make it with and the company we want to build.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Sunday Studios is an Austin-based video production and creative studio founded by Gabriel Martin and me. We specialize in commercial campaigns, brand films, documentary-style storytelling, event content and post-production.
At the core, we help brands figure out how to tell their story in a way that actually feels like them. Sometimes that means creating a polished commercial or hero film. Other times it means documenting something happening in real time, building a story around an event or finding the emotional thread inside hours of interviews and footage.
Our work has taken us into a lot of different worlds. Over the years, we’ve worked on projects involving brands and organizations like Apple, Clarins, Nike, Adidas, Kendra Scott, Capital One and Chief, with productions ranging from national campaigns and major brand activations to events surrounding Formula 1 and Cannes.
At the same time, some of our favorite work has taken us in completely different directions. We spent months in Italy with Anana creating documentary films centered around Italian Nonnas, food and family. We documented the entire mushroom-growing process for Kitchen Pride Mushroom Farms here in Texas, and we’re currently helping tell a larger documentary story with Best Day Ever Foundation.
That variety is actually a big part of what we love about this work. One week we might be filming a polished brand activation and the next we are sitting in someone’s home interviewing them about their life. We like projects where there is something real underneath the marketing and where we can actually get involved in finding the story.
What sets Sunday apart is that we have intentionally stayed small and founder-led. When a client hires Sunday Studios, they are working directly with the people producing and shaping the work. Gabe leads heavily on production and cinematography, while I spend much of my time on creative direction, storytelling, post-production and the overall experience. We stay involved from the first conversation through the final film.
Brand-wise, I am most proud that Sunday feels like an extension of how we actually want to work. We aren’t trying to look like a giant agency. We want to make ambitious work with small, talented teams, collaborate with good people and care deeply about the details.
We are still early in building the Sunday Studios name, but the experience behind it has been years in the making. Now we get to take everything we have learned from those projects and be much more intentional about the work, relationships and reputation we build next.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I go on what I can only describe as creative benders.
If I get really into an edit or an idea, I can disappear for hours, forget what time it is, make 14 versions of something no one asked for and convince myself that changing a cut by six frames has completely changed the film.
I’m definitely an obsessive editor. Sometimes the best ideas happen at very normal hours, and sometimes they happen way too late at night after I’ve watched the same 30 seconds about 75 times.
I think that energy has found its way into Sunday too. Gabe and I care a lot about the work, but there is also a lot of laughing, ridiculous ideas, sending each other references at weird hours and getting way too excited when something finally clicks.
Creative work can be stressful and demanding, so we try not to make the process feel overly serious. We want to make really good work, but we also want to enjoy making it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sundaystudios.io
- Instagram: @sunday.atx & @lostwithrhett
- Youtube: Sunday Studios
