Meet Irina Hall of Creative Muscle Studios in Woodstock

Today we’d like to introduce you to Irina Hall.

Irina, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Russia where I was trained to be a professional ballet dancer. I couldn’t continue my ballet career because my family didn’t support my passion for dance and was too worried about me not being able to support myself by dancing. Everyone around me felt like it was their obligation to advise me on what I should do in life. Some were telling me to become an engineer or physicist; others were trying to convince me to study languages or economics. I was too rebellious to give up on my passion for creativity and do what others told me to do, so I decided to make a big move – a move that took me all the way across the globe.

With just a suitcase full of clothes and not much money in my wallet, I moved to Pittsburgh, PA in 2010. People have asked me many times since then if I were afraid of moving into a foreign country where I didn’t know a single person. Maybe I was, but to be honest, I didn’t even think about it. I was too excited to start fresh and jumped right into working hard and building my new life.

I went to school for acting. I started acting in theatre and film as well as directing. I got connected with many creative people in the industry and learned all about the behind-the-scenes part of filmmaking. Very soon, I started producing my own short films. Around the same time, I was hired to work in the marketing department of an IT company to produce all of their marketing videos. After working with them for three years, I moved to Atlanta and started my own video production company called Creative Muscle Studios.

My company has been helping entrepreneurs and businesses to visually tell their stories in a compelling way to earn more trust from their audience and as a result gain more customers. However, commercial storytelling is just one side of the company.

Narrative storytelling has been a passion of mine for many years and I found an outlet for it in narrative filmmaking. With several short films under my belt, I keep working my way up to producing my first feature film.

Any creative journey is usually a journey of a lifetime that never ends for an artist who’s actively searching for new forms, expressions, characteristics, and ways of doing what they do. Where I am today is just a milestone, and I’m excited to see where this journey takes me.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s never been a smooth road. There’s always a lot of struggles and challenges along the way. I’m a lifetime learner, and I tend to go out of my comfort zone every day. That means there’s always new things that I need to learn. I had spent countless hours learning and perfecting my English before I moved to the U.S. Once I moved, I had to work hard on my accent because people couldn’t understand what I was saying. I had to start everything from scratch many times and learn new skills. I learned how to be a caregiver for elderly to support myself. There were financial struggles when I had to learn how to survive with no money left after my main bills were paid. I learn negotiation skills from negotiating with bill companies to move payment dates without penalties. There were emotional struggles when I kept going after my passion, but no one around me cared about it at the time, and I had no support.

There was an emotional exhaustion from working in the corporate world and feeling like I was undervalued and off-track with pursuing my passion which was lost forever. There was a failed marriage when I had to run from abuse and start my life from scratch again. There were counseling sessions and emotional healing. There were sleepless nights of trying to find myself again, rediscover my talents, rebuild my confidence, and start living again. There were and still are many things to learn about business, sales, marketing, production, storytelling, people and myself. The majority of all these things are not taught in schools. My learning process never stops, challenges will always be there. The best I can do is to be aware of them and keep working my way through them no matter what.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Creative Muscle Studios specializes in commercial videos for businesses. We produce marketing videos for companies to use on their websites and social media as well as TV commercials. We love telling stories and help businesses visually bring their stories to life to connect with their audience on a deeper level and gain more of their trust. We strive to always be creative and help businesses present themselves to their audience in a fun and engaging way.

We use documentary storytelling and narrative transportation techniques to tell other businesses’ stories. We also teach these techniques to business owners to help them with their overall marketing efforts and make sure their videos are implemented correctly in their overall marketing strategy.

The other side of our company focuses on narrative filmmaking. We collaborate with other local filmmakers and talent and produce narrative films on different topics that we find interesting. These films go into film festivals and usually get released online.

What were you like growing up?
When I was growing up in Russia, I was a very shy nerdy girl. Ballet was my whole life at the time. I was a regular at many different city, regional and national level dance competitions, occasionally winning a few nominations. With that, I also managed to also be an all-A student at school. I was participating in many different city and regional student competitions in such subjects as Russian language, math, physics, and English language, and I scored a few wins in these competitions as well.

Because I always wanted to excel at everything I did, I would study during all my free time, and I didn’t have too many friends besides the ones from my ballet class. I wasn’t much into pop culture, and my obsession with ballet was one of the most exciting things I had growing up.

Everything I did that wasn’t related to ballet and school was during my summer breaks. I was interested in acting and comedy as well at the time. I had my favorite Russian comedians that was trying to imitate. For the summer, my mom would send me to stay with my great aunt and uncle in the little rural town 2 hours away from our city. It was always an unforgettable experience for me every time I’d visit them. Their home was right next to a forest, and they had a few animals I got to play with like cats, dogs, cows, sometimes chickens, sheep, and even bees. I had friends and different kids who were around my age or a little older from different sides of the family who lived nearby or also visited for the summer. We would create our own adventures and get in trouble together, so I had many fun stories to tell to my ballet friends when I would return back home. And I would tell these stories with as much flavor and comedy as I could trying to imitate my favorite Russian comedian at the time Maksim Galkin.

Among other interests, there were bicycle riding, swimming, and diving in multiple beautiful lakes of our Ural Region, ice skating, puzzles, and choreographing dances to the music by Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. These dances never left the living room of our tiny city apartment.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://CreativeMuscleStudios.com
• Phone: (470) 485-7730
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creativemusclestudios/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creativemusclestudios/

Image Credit:
Neriah Kharace, Greg Patten, Mike Menninger, Molly Lowery, Nicholas Taylor

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