The first film I ever made was for the Maryland Department of the Environment. I was the script writer and the producer. Dr. David Jones, the head of the Film and Video program at Drexel University, was the director. He introduced me to The Visionaries — Paul Buck and Art Ciocco. These guys were old-school craftsmen who learned their trade shooting documentaries on 16 mm film.
I loved it. Everything about film making is the most exciting, creative stuff I have ever done. I watched Dr. Jones very carefully, and then I started to make my own industrial films. Now I was the script writer, the producer and the director. Pretty soon I was selling the product as well. And that's when I started my own company.
Technical Training Systems was my pride and joy. I worked hard. We created some excellent videos. We even won a handful of industry awards. My focus was on the pharmaceutical business. They wanted a lot of programming:
I worked with Kris Yeaworth, son of Shorty Yeaworth who made The Blob, and we regularly booked time in all of the state of the art edit suites in the area:
Things were rolling along in the early 1990's when the AMA released a policy declaration that they would be significantly changing all the rules about how pharmaceutical companies could interact with doctors. And they would tell everyone what those new rules were in two years. My business went from ten videos a year to none in about two weeks flat. Who would make new training film when they didn't know the rules?
The pharmaceutical companies were large enough to weather the storm. My company was not. I was a film maker for about five years and I still look back on it as the most completely fulfilling work I've ever done. I ran my own business, I sold high end products to huge companies and I coordinated large teams of creatives on tight budgets and time-lines. And along the way I learned how people see moving images — how the eyes are thieves of our senses. Halcyon days.