"The end product is so good it's honestly f@cking annoying."
Jessica Olive,
Assistant Vice Chancellor for Advancement Communications
About Big Teeth Productions:
Chicago Video Production
& Animation Studio
Actually isn't it about you?
Our Video Production Services
With so many choices in who can help you tell your stories via video, let’s talk about what you need to get it right and how we can be the ones to make it happen. While a lot of companies make videos, we believe in the following attributes to illustrate why we’ve been at it for twenty years (so far).
While we are based in Chicago and have gladly served the Chicagoland area all those years, we can help you create a series of excellent brand films or smart animation to get the point across easily and with some visual panache no matter where you are located.
We're your creative partner, not "just" a vendor. You might be coming to us with an idea in mind for one video or you may have a whole campaign for the upcoming year. Whatever your original thinking is, we’re going to ask you a lot of questions about it and that’s going to result in some recommendations from us based on our many years of experience in working with brands, agencies, non-profits and other fine souls. With the way that video content works today, there’s usually a lot of places to use and re-purpose footage or animation that’s been created for one thing originally into something wholly new or complementary.
When you’re looking around for a video production company, some studios will just make what you ask for without question, cash the checks, and go about their lives. We believe you hire us for our expertise, so if there's a better idea or a more efficient way to get it done, you'll hear about it. Respectfully, of course.
Video production partner
Nobody wants to work with jerks, and we aren’t jerks
Did we just become best friends? Maybe. Something that can be overlooked is the fact that throughout the course of a project there’s a lot of communication. Sometimes face to face and sometimes the ol’ basecamps, or slacks, or zooms, or other words that weren’t verbs a few years ago. Whether it’s a 10-hour shoot day or a quick question via email you want to know what’s what in a clear, understandable way. If you get a chuckle or we come up with a killer secret handshake that’s just a bonus. The point is to make the experience one that makes your life easier while crafting some amazing videos at the same time. What you'll get from us is a group of people who are smart, kind, and most importantly, easy to work with. We are 100% jerk-free, which is rarer in this industry than you might think.
Project management... so unsexy, so important
There are a million moving parts in any given project, and we know how to manage all of them. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, when you are working with your chosen video production company, you want to worry as little as possible. And if you’ve ever decided to go the cheap and easy route, only to end up back where you started… well, yeah that happens.
Big Teeth thrives on resourcefulness. We anticipate problems before they become problems and communicate every step of the way. And if one of those pesky problems do arise, then we get cranking into “solve” mode. Ask us about that time we had to fully cast a fake Telenova with Spanish language talent in Miami… the day before the shoot!
That may not sound super cool, but trust us—you need it.
Before we start rolling cameras, we figure out the "why" behind your content. What's the reason for this project? How will it impact your audience? Once we know that, we can be funny, serious, dramatic, or sexy (ooh la la) - whatever works for the project at hand, as long as it meets your goals.
Understanding the people behind the project will often be a huge difference maker in getting things right the first time around, because who wants to have to go back and fix things that could have been caught and solved right away?
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you
Our History
How it started
Big Teeth was born in 2005 when Elise met Gregg - two agency world survivors with a shared love of movies, making and watching them. A few short films and legal documents later, a company was born.
What came next
While the pair has occasionally found themselves disagreeing on something (lunch orders and such) they always agree on surrounding themselves with smart, honest collaborators and know how to assemble a team of people who work together to make the best video and animation possible.
Where we are now
Having been around for over two decades, we know the importance of strong communication and creative thinking, and bring that to every single project.
Big Teeth is proud to be a WBENC certified woman-owned business.
Why do we do it?
A few years back we did one of those fun exercises that led us to our core values. Wanna hear what they are? OK. Joy, Resourcefulness and Family. Not picked out of a hat, we did some soul searching and inward thinking to really look at why we do what we do.
Joy
This was deliberate in not just being “happy.” The idea of joy was that we want it to be involved in all stages of the work. From first meeting, to shoot day, to edit session, to final result. It matters to us that the people you work with on set or in post are kind, and collaborative. If we can find the joy, so will your audience.
Resourcefulness
We’ve said it before (on this very page) but the ability to handle all the crazy things that being a video production company throws at you and keeping up with the changes in how to make great videos needs to be done in a way that burdens you, the client, as little as possible. Life is ultimately a series of problems in need of solutions, and that’s totally our vibe.
Family
For starters, we are founded and managed by an actual family. One who brings their dogs to the office, and sometimes their human children too. But we also feel proud of how we’ve been able to continually expand our universe with clients, staff, crews, collaborators and whoever else we hang around with on any given day, and that these people tend to care about us as much as we care about them.
Let's Talk
Every project starts with a conversation—preferably one that doesn't happen at 6 AM or during the Cubs World Series (future ones, seriously it’s gonna happen again). We'd love to hear what you're working on and figure out if we're the right fit.
You come with your goals in mind, and we’ll bring a friendly ear, a bucketful of ideas, and a trove of experience in making people happy by producing really great video and animations for companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes (usually building shaped though).