Minneapolis-based Soona creates digital content ASAP

People want content fast. Like really fast.

To help respond to rising demand for quick professional photos and videos tailored for content-hungry online audiences, Liz Giorgi and Hayley Anderson recently opened a same-day production studio that they have aptly named Soona.

The Minneapolis shop launched this May, a month after the pair started a sister studio in Denver. In August, Giorgi and Anderson hope to expand their company so people can send in products without having to step foot in their studios.

The 2,000-square-foot Soona location in northeast Minneapolis can be staged to look like a living room, a kitchen or any other space with the help of props and furniture.

"It really is a flexible space that's designed to be used as a playground for creating the content you need to communicate online," said Giorgi, who serves as Soona's chief executive. She added that clients are using the space to create content for Instagram stories, Facebook ads, e-mail marketing campaigns and YouTube videos accessed through their websites.

Five years ago, Giorgi started Mighteor, a video production company that focused on web video. The shop has created a range of content from animated videos explaining complicated processes to product launch videos and testimonial clips. About three years ago, Giorgi hired Anderson as the director of creative and animation.

A year ago, the women began to brainstorm ways to make photo and video production as easy for customers as it is to visit an office printing shop for copies and signs.

"She and I would hear time and time again from customers of all different sizes," Giorgi said. "… They wanted to create more photo and video [content], but they couldn't make it fast enough or affordable enough."

So Giorgi and Anderson launched Soona. They wanted to launch the business with two locations in quick succession to test the model, Giorgi said.

"There are plenty of production companies in New York or L.A.," she said. "What really is missing is in the middle of the country where all these amazing businesses have been started … We don't have the same density of opportunities to tell these great creative stories."

There are 14 workers split between the two offices, with Minneapolis serving as a headquarters where the development and business teams are located. Giorgi, a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a degree in journalism, goes back and forth between the offices.

Anderson, who graduated from DePaul University in Chicago with a degree in digital cinema and also has worked at public relations firm Weber Shandwick, mostly works out of Minneapolis. Anderson serves as Soona's chief creative officer.

The Soona studios are being used by a range of businesses including local startups.

Aisha Formanski, a local jewelry maker working out of a studio in Northeast, was impressed when she went to Soona to have photos taken to promote her stacking ring club.

"It was perfect because you just make an appointment and Soona gives you a call to talk about what you envision, and you bring in your product and within two hours I left with high-quality images that I could use," Formanski said.

The shoot took about two hours and Soona sent her edited photos eight hours later.

Normally Formanski, who is the founder of Everthine Jewelry, would have to book a photographer sometimes months in advance, a model and a designer, which would make her photos cost about $150 each. Soona's price was around $40 each and the experience was much more convenient, Formanski said.

"When I arrived, there was a whole team to help me — designer, photographer, assistants on hand," she said. "By the end of the day, I received 18 edited, high-res images."

Formanski has used the photos in her newsletters, website, on Instagram and in print. The technology at Soona's studio allows producers to shoot, edit and deliver content to clients within 24 hours. Soona uses camera-to-cloud software that allows clients to view content on an iPad as it is being shot, Anderson said.

"For other productions where you can maybe have a monitor or where a lot of times you don't have a monitor to review it, you have to wait a couple of days," Anderson said. "[But with Soona,] you are doing it in real time. You know that you are getting what you want."

Everything is connected to the studios' high-speed internet. Soona founders hope in the future they will be able to provide a similar service off-site.

When it first opened, Soona charged customers about $400 for the hour. For one hour, they could take and lightly edit nine photos or produce one edited short video clip. Soona has changed its pay model to charge $39 per photo and $93 per video with add-ons to edit, turn them into GIFs, add music and other effects.

Soona has raised $1.2 million in seed funding led by New York-based 2048 Ventures with follow-on funding from Minneapolis-based Matchstick Ventures and Boulder, Colo.-based Techstars Ventures. Soona's founders eventually want to expand the shop to more locations.

In August, Soona Anytime is scheduled to debut, which will allow businesses to ship their products to the studios and be sent digital content within a week.

Nicole Norfleet • 612-673-4495