Local video company points its lens at Ohio hip-hop

By Don Thrasher, Contributing Writer 1:29 PM Tuesday, January 3, 2012

It’s easier than ever for independent artists to use inexpensive digital cameras and home computers to create music videos for Internet consumption.

However, Dayton-based music Web site and videography company ThaDoubleO recognized the need locally for an experienced crew of hip-hop fans with state-of-the-art gear and a website to promote the finished products to a larger audience.

“It’s definitely easy to throw something up on YouTube, but it’s not easy to make it look professional,” ThaDoubleO co-founder Mike Feggans said. “It’s all about quality. We have six HD cameras, so we’ve invested a lot of money.”

Feggans was holding court recently at the Starbuck’s near Wright State University. His partner, Justin Holly, sat quietly beside the loquacious mouthpiece of ThaDoubleO, while photographer Donald Jones snapped photos of the discussion.

“We started making a lot of videos for local artists in the city, and we do a lot of video interviews with artists in the city,” Feggans said. “I try to help them out a little bit. A lot of the larger markets like L.A. and New York have a lot of cameras, and Dayton just doesn’t have that same level of media.

“A lot of the younger artists don’t know the business yet, but they want to get their artwork and their sound out there,” he said. “We’re trying to present those up-and-coming artists from Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati with the same quality as somebody from a larger area.”

New content is added to the site several times each day, so the work is never-ending for the three-person crew.

“We have to put up 10 songs a day,” Feggans said. “It’s not something you can just do once a week, once a day. We have to always put new music up and do videos.

“Once we started ThaDoubleO, we didn’t want to rely on other people to provide us content. Since I had a background doing video, I purchased a video camera and we started going out there and filming and it started spreading from there.”

The work is starting to pay off with a growing web presence and industry recognition, including winning the award for best videographers at the Ohio Hip-Hop Awards in Columbus in September.

“It’s going great,” Feggans said. “When we started, we were maybe getting 25 hits a month on the site. Now we’re doing 5,000 hits. We’re looking to do 10,000 hits a month by the end of the year. It’s just constant growth, so we’re trying to stay positive.”

Get more information at www.thadoubleo.com.

Contact contributing arts and music writer Don Thrasher at donaldthrasher8@aol.com.

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