Media and Movies

That photography and motion pictures were someone ingrained in my DNA came as a surprise when my Dad, during the surprise trip to Pittsburgh, started telling me about his brothers. But I was no prodigy. Although my parents and relatives took many pictures they were at best "snap shots."

(L) Fascinated with how the crank made the tripod get taller.
(R) Detroit's Telenews Theater the year it shut down as the result
of the competition from the new technology known as TELEVISION.

The closest I got to broadcast network television. 

It was a trip to New York during college for a physics conference. My first time there. Loved it. Because of my interest in media it was suggested I stop in ABC and get an application for summer internship. But I was not interested in the media commodity that network television represents. I didn't like the idea of doing the same thing one project to the next.

As soon as we moved to Houston, I picked up photography as my advocation with the intention that when I got laid off from the Space Program I would turn to photography. I had no idea that motion pictures, video, and live shows were in my future. Below, I'm holding a friend's Nikon. Bill Kincey took the picture with one of my Canon SRL cameras. I also had two Mamya 2 1/4-inch C330s for weddings, and I still have a pristine Calumet 4x5-inch view camera. Wonder if they make a 4x5 CMOS sensor to rival 4x5?

 My favorite subject, of course, was always Pam, my beautiful wife.

  

Pam posed untiringly for my photography experiments early in our marriage, as I learned about lighting, exposures, lenses and darkroom techniques. The shot in the middle is my all time favorite, shot with a single 250-watt lamp and several reflectors for a correspondence photography course I took from the School of Modern Photography. One bathroom in our apartments was the darkroom, and one wall of our living room had rolls of seamless paper mounted on the wall.  (click to enlarge)

The Texas sun near water always offered possibilities with a long 350mm lens. At right above is Pam's sister, Linda, who came from California to visit us in Texas. 

While working at Ford as a photographer and later producer-director, I started Full Circle Productions with Bill Wiitala and Don Schendel to produce multimedia slide shows for the Free Methodist Church of North America. 

Full Circle's first studio, May 1979. 

Above a picture of my basement after we left the Taylor Free Methodist Church as Youth Ministers. I wasn't cut out for ministry work. But the Church's headquarters almost immediately hired me and two friends to produce media for them. Behind the projection screen was a large darkroom with a 10-foot long sink made from urethane coated plywood. A home made six-foot long slide sorting light table is against the right wall. Clients would come to this humble but well-equipped abode to review our work. David Condon's "Crab Apple" hangs to the left of the screen. 

FULL CIRCLE COMMUNICATIONS, INC
A Great Company of Wonderful People.

We produced many awesome projects for Fortune 100 companies.

Front L-R: Gary Weinfurther* (Computer Software Mgr.), Gail Cody (Document Processor), Tony Amore* (Audio Technician), Kelly Welhusen (Production Secretary), Dave Girson (Graphics Supervisor). Middle (L-R) Susan Hurst (VP, Graphics Mgr., Interactive Producer), Julie Haggard (VP Administration & Finance), Jacque McClure* (Electronic Publishing Supervisor). Back (L-R): Bob Peckham* (Producer & Director), Curt LaLonde (Development Mgr/Writer), Daryl Hutchinson (Graphic Designer/Artist), Stan Williams (President/Janitor), Tom McGregor (Account Manager, Product Coordinator), Paul Gustafson (Producer, Project Director).  [* Contract Associate]

At Full Circle, I discovered the irony of owning your own production company. I wanted to shoot, direct, produce, edit (all the cool stuff)...and be involved in the creative process. But that's not how owning a company turned out for me. I was generally unable to do what you see me doing at the right. Instead, I was in meetings reviewing legal and financial documents, settling employee problems, or taking clients out to lunch. I missed the "real" work. Closing down Full Circle was heartbreaking and traumatic. But one of the benefits was that I eventually got back to doing what I wanted to do in the first place. 

The first hint that I might be interested in something beyond the industrial and corporate media world came in the form of a storybook Pam bought to read to the kids at bedtime—THE STORY OF HOLLY AND IVY by Scottish author Rumer Godden. The girls thought it would make a great Christmas movie. At Full Circle we wrote Rumer's agent in New York, but they ignored us. Finally we wired Rumer a planter of holly and ivy to her home in Scotland with a note from Trudy asking Rumer to sell me an option on her story. We immediately got a call from her NY agent. A few weeks later we flew to NY to meet Rumer and sign the option. 

Yours truly, Rumer Godden, and Trudy in the New York offices of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

We wrote a screenplay, in part with my future writing partner Bill Wiitala, and were able to pitch it to Disney in L.A.. But it never went much further. The option expired and we didn't know what else to do. We were naive. Needless to say we have a terrific script...and perhaps someday we can make the movie about Holly, a little orphan girl who wanders a quant English village on a snowy Christmas Eve looking for her imagined grandmother's house and in the process finds an enchanted toy shop and an orphaned doll named Ivy.

During our NY trip, in an effort to figure out how to produce the animated characters in the magical Toy Shop, we paid a visit to the inventor of half the muppets on Sesame Street, Kermit Love...of who Kermit the Frog is named. Love often appeared in the background of Sesame Street episodes. He was a great host and offered to work with us on the project should we get it funded. 

Trudy meets Kermit Love and "talks" to another of his creations—SNUGGLES. 

The puppet's animator is just out of frame, but Trudy talked to the bear, not the person who in full view was working the "character."  Amazing how all that works.