One for the archives

Sunday, April 11, 2004

By Kate Nagengast

The Grand Rapids Press

Without Thom Bell and his fledgling business, Heirloom Video, Jim and Lois

Flickinger's grandchildren may never have understood why the letters their

grandparents exchanged were mailed with 4-cent stamps placed upside down.

Heirloom Video -- owned by filmmakers Bell and his wife, Suzanne Zack -- has

carved out a niche in a highly competitive business, producing personal family

histories on DVD.

as corporate spending on video and filmmaking shrinks.

"In the '80s, there was a lot of (corporate) money being spent and a lot of work,"

Bell said. "But now, with manufacturing struggling to stay viable, that cut off

excesses, like video production."

At the same time, filmmaking technology rapidly evolved. A decade ago, many

common gadgets -- such as digital editing systems, DVD burners, large computer

hard drives and DVD-composing software -- were extremely expensive and

inconsistent.

Personal documentary work such as that done by Heirloom Video never could

have been made in the basement of a house at 653 North Park St. NE 10 years

ago.

Bell, 48, and Zack, 44, each has more than 20 years' experience in commercial

and documentary filmmaking. They have worked with large corporations such as

Alticor, Whirlpool and Smiths Aerospace.

But making sure the Flickingers' stamp placement is understood 50 years from

now has become their mission.

Lights, action

Last month, Bell and his entourage arrived at the Flickingers' home with two

cameras, a television monitor, half a dozen lights and countless cords. In his crew

were makeup artist Cynthia Harrison, freelance camera assistant Gregg McNeill

and co-producer Maggie Annerino.

"A film set is about 10 hours sitting around with five minutes of frenzied action,"

joked McNeill as he set up lights in a living room at the Flickingers' home on

Grand Rapids' Northwest Side.

An Heirloom Video features one or two family members, seated at a familiar place

in their own home, telling stories. They will incorporate old photographs,

newspaper clippings, children's drawings and other memorabilia to illustrate their

anecdotes.

A six-hour day of filming will lead to a 90-minute documentary DVD. The bill is

$5,500.

Bell makes professional films, but not staged ones. It often takes more than 80

hours of editing to cut his footage down to a DVD, with the content divided into

chapters. But the effort is worth the trouble, he said.

"You want to hear the way Grandma sounds or see the way Grandpa looks," said

Bell. "The thing we're striving for is to capture on tape the moments when an

individual is unguarded and at their best. It's a document that is not so much

factual as actual."

Family members wear makeup, but only so they feel confident in front of the

cameras, not to alter their appearance.

"We're not concerned about concealing what we're doing," Bell explained to Lois

Flickinger when she tried to hide notes she had outlined for the segment on her

childhood.

"Remember," he coached her, "this is your family we're talking to, your grandkids,

or even in some way to your parents."

"But her family thinks she's perfect," Jim Flickinger teased.

The Flickingers -- Jim, 57, and Lois, 58 -- have been married 38 years. He is a

retired Grand Rapids attorney, and they have five children and 13 grandchildren.

They coordinate a charity called Amazon Relief that operates five schools with

more than 1,000 students and aids lepers in the impoverished Amazon region.

But in front of Bell's cameras last month, the story that mattered most to them

was about how they met at a wedding on June 2, 1962, in Traverse City.

The upside-down stamps on hundreds of letters they wrote during the two years

between that wedding and their first year together at Aquinas College were more

than hurried mistakes.

"It was our own unspoken word that we loved each other," Lois Flickinger told the

camera.

The right match

When corporate funding shifted away from video production to Web site design

and other Internet projects, rapid advances in digital filmmaking simultaneously

spawned an industry of small video-production businesses.

Alticor, then Amway, once employed its own film production staff, but closed its

lab and dismissed the crew in 2000. Many of those filmmakers, along with their

peers at other companies, became freelancers.

Hiring those professionals to film weddings, graduations, anniversary and

retirement parties has become commonplace.

There are nearly 50 companies in the Grand Rapids area available to film events,

assemble digital slide shows set to music and transfer old camcorder cassettes to DVD.

A few offer customers the chance to come into the studio and record their voices over the slide shows.

"Everyone has a different style on keepsake projects, and no one is better than

the other, but it has everything to do with matching the right product to the right

people."

Bell agreed: "Even five years ago, the technology, by today's standards, was

arduous. Now, it's more affordable, more reliable, cheaper -- and it also has

become pretty good.

"A $6,000 to $8,000 camera now exceeds what was $40,000 to $50,000 fairly

recently."

Great Lakes Video Services, 1320 Front Ave. NW, was ahead of its time. It

opened in 1980 and offers commercial and family services.

One of its best sellers is a video greeting card, production manager Mark Weiss

said. "People bring in pictures, and we put them to music. They're used at weddings or

graduations," said Weiss. "We just did one for an East Grand Rapids volleyball

team."

Great Lakes charges about $1 per photograph, plus $15 for music and a $30

DVD mastering fee. For about $25 more an hour, customers could come into the

studio to record comments with the pictures. Weiss says they often make five to

10 greeting cards each month.

Their most popular service remains video to DVD transfers, of which they do six

to eight a week, for $29.95 per DVD.

"Our commercial work is for a much higher price, and we do less of it," Weiss

said. "We do more of the family-oriented stuff because it doesn't take as long."

Annerino, Bell's co-producer at Heirloom Video and an adjunct professor at Grand

Valley State University, welcomes the rising popularity of family documentaries.

She has worked in film for two decades, but after years of commercial work is

pleased to return to "storytelling."

"The commercial film industry has been down, and this really is documentary,"

Annerino said of Heirloom Video's projects. "But it's a great way to do film when

the economy is bad -- and a great way to preserve history.

"It's different because you focus on reality instead of creating reality. We tell the

stories of people's lives."

Pricing the priceless

Bell admits potential Heirloom Video clients often suffer "sticker shock" when they learn that it will cost more than $5,000 for a DVD.

"One of the most important things is how you want it to be used," filmmaker

Corder said. "Pick a medium that will work with your uses. Is it only to be used at

a reception and all you need is some pictures and music during dinner? Or do

you want it to be lasting?"

Using digital recording technology means these family documentaries or slide

shows can be copied countless times without losing quality, while analog

recordings on VHS tapes and their predecessors deteriorated. DVDs are

guaranteed to last for 50 years.

Don and Joanne Boysen of Middleville were Heirloom Video's first subjects. They

have shown the video made last fall repeatedly at their Friday-night family

dinners, said their son, Mike Boysen, 45, of Wayland.

All four of their children still live in the area and gather weekly -- but even in an

family this tight-knit, their parents' story revealed surprises.

"The thing that's most interesting to me is to hear your parents tell stories about

you, to hear what they think of you," Boysen said. "While talking to a stranger,

they're open, and it's a very cool thing that they felt comfortable enough to start

this dialogue about their kids.

"You think, 'How come you never told me that?'"

The Boysens' original Heirloom Video was two discs -- one about their family and

one about the homes they have lived in. Now, they have hired Bell to create a

third disc about their 50th wedding anniversary June 20.

"The story is continually unfolding," Boysen said.

Bell and Zack hope their business will find more clients like the Boysens.

"I need people who understand the value of family," Bell said. "But trying to sell

something that is about family connection is tricky, because as soon as you try to

sell, you diminish it."

Although neither Bell nor Zack has any formal business education -- they are

graduates of Grand Valley State University's William James College with degrees

in arts and media -- they believe their experience in corporate filmmaking gave

them a good feel for business processes.

For now, they are relying on word of mouth to advertise their business, but

Heirloom Video is trademarked for franchise.

They already have received a call from a filmmaker in Florida interested in

starting there.

"There's not a demand for what Thom (Bell) is doing in high volumes," Cordon

said. "Because you're really taking a look back at your family, and people buying

into this need to do some work on their own."

The cost also limits the market. "Not everyone is going to be able to afford it, but

there are probably a lot of people buying PowerPoint (photograph slide shows)

and being let down," he added.

Still, Boysen is still proud of his family's investment.

"It's hard to put a dollar value on something like this because it's so rich," Boysen

said. "You know you're creating a historical document. ...

"All you have to do is compare it to anything else in your life, like a car or a

motorcycle or hot tub, and it puts it in perspective."

© 2004 Grand Rapids Press. Used with permission