About Rance

Rance Costa is a New Media consultant currently living in Redondo Beach, California  USA.

He was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas on August 15, 1979 to Ron and Connie Costa.  Until the age of three, Rance lived in Winslow, AR with his parents.  Not long after, his father relocated the family to Daytona Beach, FL.  Rance remained in Florida until 1989, when he and his family moved to Northglenn, CO.  He attended the remainder of Elementary School at Leroy Drive Elementary school where he picked up the trombone for the first time in 5th grade.

He went on to attend Northglenn Junior High followed by Northglenn High School instead of Thornton High School because of Northglenn’s excellent music program.  During his High School years, Rance learned many other instruments, including Trumpet, French Horn, Tuba, Euphonium and even the Tympani as he was the featured tympani performer for the 1997 World Champion Northglenn HS Percussion Theater.  Rance’s senior year in high school consisted of one gym class, one English class, one math class and four different music ensembles, playing the tuba, french horn, tenor trombone and trumpet on a daily basis.

He dropped out of HS in 1997 after realizing that he was going to fail his final semester of bowling class.  Yes, that’s right, bowling class; you see, Rance isn’t a morning person and the class was at 7am.  He took his GED test and scored in the 98th percentile, ironically opening up the opportunity to attend Universities that had not accepted him previously based on his HS transcripts.  From there he went on to study Music Education at the University of Northern Colorado under the tutelage of Buddy Baker, UNC’s resident trombone professor who only allowed Rance to play tenor and bass trombone.

Beginning in 1997, Rance also began participating in Drum and Bugle Corps with the Denver Blue Knights.  He remained there throughout his college experience and beyond, participating for 4 seasons in a row.  During these 4 seasons, Rance performed in over 115 competitions, 35 live performances, 15 educational clinics and appeared in 4 DCI World Championship Grand Finals competitions on Baritone, Mellophone and Contra-Bass bugle.

Rance began teaching instrumental music, movement and calisthenics while in college in 1998.  He taught music and choreographed drill for marching bands, indoor percussion ensembles in 12 different Denver-area schools from 1998 until 2006, making him one of the most sought-after Denver-area adjudicators at that time.  His groups performed at more than 50 local competitions, competed in 5 different states and appeared at the Bands of America Grand Nationals competition twice during his time.  Rance also designed and programmed marching band shows, drills, and indoor percussion ensemble shows during this time, making him one of the most flexible talents in the space.

Rance also served as the Webmaster for Winter Guard International from January of 2000 until March of 2002 when WGI relocated it’s home office away from Wheat Ridge, CO to Dayton, OH.

In 2004 Rance was invited to serve as brass staff on the world renown Troopers Drum and Bugle Corps.  He remained on staff until the end of the season in 2005, when he moved to another corps, the Dubuque Colts.  Rance served on brass staff with the Colts in 2006, 2007 and 2009.

In late 2006, Rance was approached by the Global Gaming League to become a professional commentator for video game competitions on television and the web.  Rance relocated to Los Angeles, CA in October of 2006 to pursue his dream of traveling the world as a professional talent.  During the remainder of 2006 and 2007 Rance appeared at 6 live gaming events across the country, and traveled internationally four times to China, Denmark, England and Germany to showcase international gaming talent on domestic and international television and web presentations.  Rance’s commentary has been featured on CBS, DirecTV, CBC News, Gamestop TV, Giga-TV and G4 and seen by millions on the internet.  It was during this experience Rance began to learn many production skills, finding a niche in operating Newtek’s ground breaking live video switching system, the Tricaster.  Not limiting his scope to just talent work, Rance began to live direct and camera-op at events as well as serve as stage talent and emcee.

In 2007 Rance  joined with Marcus Graham (djWHEAT), Hogan Carter and Mike Dettman to create the first daily internet TV show called Epileptic Gaming.  Epileptic Gaming began as a podcast in 2003 with djWHEAT, and was picked up by the Global Gaming League to be presented in video form on their various properties.  Rance served as co-host, live director and audio technician on this daily show, which aired for two hours every weekday from January of 2007 until November of 2007, tallying a whopping 140+ episodes comprised of over 250 hours of video content.  Rance also appeared on the pilot of the now defunct TV show the Championship Gaming Series as a game commentator and in-game camera man.

In December of 2007 Rance was no longer with the ailing Global Gaming League and began to freelance in the LA area, providing New Media consultation services, productions services, photography services, graphic design and web design services to his clients.  He travelled to three events in 2008 with Major League Gaming, acting as a field producer for web content.  He spent much time with ArcoStream, a Content Delivery Network and works with them to this day.  Rance also served as Content Director for WebRidesTV.com, an auto-centric video website.  Rance presided over this property until March of 2009. Between 2007 and 2009 Rance also freelanced for a new tech company called Machinima.com; providing video production services and voiceover services for tournaments and reference content.

During the second half of 2009, Rance began to increase his freelance photography work, shooting layouts for Global Fitness Media, TheStream.tv and the World Cyber Games as well as the Drum Corps International tour.  He was also hired often to operate Newtek’s Tricaster machine as a freelancer for clients around LA.

2010 was a banner year for Rance, as he was approached by the founders of Machinima.com to assist them in launching two other properties with nearly the same business model. Beginning in February of 2010 Rance was part of two small teams that launched StyleHaul and DanceOn, two venture capital funded tech startups that are focused on creating original content for Youtube’s Premier Partner push in 2010. StyleHaul has grown substantially in it’s first year, going from zero viewership in February of 2010 to 1.8 billion (yes, billion with a B) video views network wide in only 9 months with Rance’s strategies. DanceOn has employed the same approach, however has enjoyed more modest growth, going from zero to 280 million video views network wide in it’s first 10 months. It took StyleHaul a mere 9 months to reach $1MM in ad revenue with this strategy.

If this wasn’t an amazing enough start to 2010, in October Rance also ended up securing a position as brass tech for one of the best Drum and Bugle Corps in the activity’s history. The Crossmen World Class Drum Corps, from San Antonio, TX now enjoy Rance’s summer services including brass instruction as well as new media services and photography. As a result of this partnership the Crossmen have enjoyed a facelift and strategic planning services with regards to their underdeveloped Youtube presence. Rance is currently working with the Crossmen to help them become a more ‘social’ organization through the use of online tools and new media in this fast paced modern environment. Rance continues to work on this property to develop it into a fund raising mechanism for the Crossmen, who are a 501c(3) non-profit and always looking for more sources of funds.

In 2011 with ArcoStream, Rance and his team developed a WordPress Plugin called CDN Speed Cache. This plugin for the world’s most popular CMS system is a true one-click install of off-site CDN caching services for websites that load slowly. Website owners with a WordPress install that is media heavy (images, video, compiles of .exes, etc), would benefit from off site and local caching being enabled on the WordPress install.

Rance also joined forces with the Cyber Sports Network, an up-and-coming league serving up tournaments to the regular gamer with streaming coverage and a pretty kickass Youtube Channel as well. Rance is now the host of “The Rundown” with Garrett “Gwin” Prechel and is supported by the amazing administrative staff at the CSN. Rance serves as Producer, Live Director and Co-Host for this show, covering a weekly StarCraft 2 invite tournament that is syndicated on Youtube.

Today Rance works as a new media consultant and freelances out of Redondo Beach, CA where he experiments with cutting edge video and audio production techniques, photography, graphic design, web production (including live web streaming) and turntablism.

Rance is available as a freelance Sports Photographer or Videographer with his Canon 7D or a fashion and corporate photographer with his Canon 5D Mark II.