By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
“Cherish your memories through film.” Many of us have happy memories which we might be able to picture in our minds, but what if those happy times were recorded in an actual video which we could play and share? Today we’ll meet a young entrepreneur who is capturing and preserving those happy memories for others.
Matt Crubel is the founder and owner of Silver Creek Creative, a video production company near Manhattan. Matt grew up at Manhattan and attended Riley County High School where he was an outstanding basketball player.
He also took media classes and became highly interested in video. “I and some other guys told the teacher that we wanted to help put together highlight videos for the sports teams,” Matt said. He helped produce highlight films for football, basketball, baseball, and track and field.
Matt went on to play for Manhattan Christian College and Neosho Community College. He came to K-State and played on the practice squad during the time that the team made it to the final eight. He also took some video classes.
Matt is an outdoorsman. “Some guys wanted me to film one of their hunts,” Matt said. It was a lot of fun. He went to work for some guys who had a hunting film production company and eventually went out on his own. He spent seven years in the hunting film industry. His company primarily filmed whitetail deer and turkey hunts in Kansas and sent crews as far away as a deer hunt in Wisconsin and a bear hunt in Canada.
Matt and his friend Curtis went into another business together. They opened an outdoor store of their own called Boone’s Outdoors in Manhattan.
Matt also got asked about doing videos of weddings. “I did a wedding video and the couple fell in love with what I did,” Matt said. He liked the challenge. “These videos required a little more skill and creativity.”
Meanwhile, Matt married Brandi whom he had met at Riley County High School. They eventually had a little daughter named Revae. When she was six months old, her parents got shocking news: Revae was diagnosed with cancer. There was a football-sized tumor on her kidney.
Matt and Brandi were devastated, but they carried on. Revae had immediate surgery and follow-up treatments. Today, she is cancer-free.
Matt went to work for the City of Manhattan and proceeded to pursue work in wedding videography on the side. In early 2017, he launched his own wedding video production company. Since he and Brandi live on Silver Creek Road west of Manhattan, they named the company Silver Creek Creative.
His studio is in their home which is located west of the rural community of Keats, an unincorporated community with a population of perhaps 200 people. Now, that’s rural.
Today, Silver Creek Creative offers wedding videos and other types of videos such as advertising, realtor home tours, parties, and more. He also subcontracts with another video company. In addition to conventional cameras, Matt has a drone which takes aerial views. This is especially useful for outdoor home tours for realtors and also provides some spectacular footage of wedding sites.
Silver Creek Creative offers various wedding packages which include the ceremony plus varying features. Typically brides get a musical compilation of the ceremony plus raw video footage of the day.
“It’s a day of joy,” Matt said. “I use the phrase, `Cherish your memories through film,’ because the video lets you relive your wonderful day second-by-second. It makes me happy to share that compassion with the couple and know that what I produce will brighten their joy and brighten their future.”
For more information, and to see Matt’s touching video about his daughter, Revae, and her successful and valiant fight against cancer, go to www.silverccreative.com.
Cherish your memories through film. Many of us have happy memories, but this entrepreneurial business is capturing those memories and saving them for the future. We salute Matt Crubel of Silver Creek Creative for making a difference with his creativity and ingenuity. It is a wonderful thing to watch.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.huckboydinstitute.org.
