About a year ago, I took almost all of my video gear and sold it back to an outfit called Adorama for pennies on the dollar. I had had it. What a nutty way to make a living. Dragging gear all over the country, up hotel stairs, down hospital basements until I went out of my mind. Everyone was a latent Spielberg or a Tarantino. No respect.

I started Double O Creative back around the millennium with hopes of making it an integral part of my company at the time, Bristol Myers Squibb. They didn’t know what to do with me. Even after they relocated me.

I was just a camera monkey to them. My contemporaries in the video world didn’t help the image either. Plumbers and landscapers by day, they drove pricing and quality down to the nub. That was it for me, it was rinse and spit. No mas.

Until I arrived out west. One thing we always knew in radiopharmaceutical sales, was that folks out west were early adopters. A new product launch would always see adoption spreading left to right. Always.

Out here, I’m finding that video production is not just a “nice to have” like it was back east. Out here, it’s a “must have.” Out here, it’s a valuable sales, marketing and training tool. It is valued. Who’da thunk?

Everyone from banks to boardrooms are looking for that one (me?) someone that can make the screen come alive with relevant information, to reach, teach and inform. Someone that knows how to craft a message and bring the best out in their talent and get that message heard and seen. I know business, I know video, and I knew how to present it.

Out here, they know, understand and appreciate this modality. How refreshing. Who knows? I’m might snap off my lens cover once again. I put almost 20 years into this discipline, it would be nice to man the director’s chair again. Where’s my beret?