2 of a Kind
Spring 2017
Twins Kaelan and Aja exited the car and ran across the lawn. They were dressed as Batman and Robin, typical of average 4-year-olds near Halloween. They were singing the Batman Theme song, but their collective speech impediment made it almost unrecognizable. This was their first DIY film.
Kaelan and Aja Selbach-Broad are now second-year film students at Syracuse University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts in Syracuse, New York. Originally from Brattleboro, Vermont, the Selbach-Broad twins recently started their own video production company, Broad Brothers Productions.
“We, since a very young age, have wanted to have our own production company inspired by the production companies we’ve seen out and about. Bad Robot was one of our favorites growing up,” said Aja.
The Selbach-Broads have been creating corporate and client-driven videos since their junior year of high school when they began taking a Career and Technical Education (CTE) course in video production. Before middle school the twins were home-schooled, according to Kaelan and Aja. The CTE course was extremely helpful, said Aja, but now their end-goal is to be working on narrative film sets. Broad Brothers Productions helps fund that endeavor. The twins have mostly been shooting weddings, advertisements and concert recap videos.
“The production company is us selling our skills to make videos –to make money – rather than school is more of ‘I want to be eventually working on film sets,’” said the twins. Kaelan and Aja Selbach-Broad aren’t only video producers, they are DJs, radio hosts and Resident Advisors as well.
“There’s two things that kind of run our lives and that is film and video stuff and live music,” said Kaelan. The twins are in love with electronic music and are often found at music festivals across the country. They use it as a break in routine. The brothers enjoy filming and producing, but don’t have as much time to do other activities as they did in high school.
“Music was always the escape. Through high school we were getting to the point where almost every week we we’re driving so far – almost every week we would go to a show,” said Aja. The twins used to throw parties in their barn in Vermont, with themselves as the DJs. They continued being DJs into college through their weekly radio show on WERW, “2OFAKIND”. The radio show serves as their creative music outlet, according to the Selbach-Broad twins.
““Music was always the escape.””
“Trying to manage school work on top of trying to manage being an RA on top of trying to manage starting our own business, our own production company, and DJ-ing, and trying to have a life – friends on top of that? It’s a lot, it’s overwhelming a lot of the time,” said Aja.
Kaelan and Aja Selbach-Broad are still getting it all done, and recently launched their Broad Brothers Productions Facebook page.
“Most of the time, even though it’s a lot of work, it’s stuff that I enjoy doing,” said Aja, “Even though I’ll bitch about how much work it is all the time it’s stuff I enjoy doing. First world problems, you know what I mean?”
