"My Life in A-V" has nothing to do with adult video.
It is, however, an interactive tour through forty years of low-tech, hi-tech, hi-jinks and highlights of a career derived from New York / New Jersey native and resident Brien Lee's love of media.
At age 6, he got a battery powered Mickey Mouse (both trade name and quality rating) projector. He took it to school to give a showing to his first grade classmates and learned his first audio-visual lesson-- toy battery powered projectors are no match for Incarnation School's full length windows.
"That's very nice, Brien,", said Sister Winifred. "Now sit down."
After years of funny phone call pranks featuring 78 rpm records and unimpressed stalkees ("That's very nice, Brien,", said harassed classmate Maureen Liddy), Brien turned to slides as a means of creating communications.
After producing well-received "tribute" side shows for relatives ("That's, very nice, Brien... now put that stuff back where you found it," said his tributee father), he began a business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that defied all odds and spawned a career that has lasted over forty years.
For one thing, it involved not video or film, but making sight and sound shows from slides. This was not the most portable way of selling for traveling salespeople ("What am I going to do with all this spaghetti?" was the cry of one client).
During that time, he produced commercials for the local serious repertory theater featuring pies in the face and talking buildings, staged a re-creation of Star Trek for 2000 vacuum cleaner salesman, flew a 50 foot tall vacuum cleaner on stage, watched tap dancers flair away on dry ice, reunited the Beatles with a dead Ed Sullivan, got involved in selling bleeding edge technology to other producers ("that was close, Brien", said his client from Walgreens) and basically rewrote the rules of using humor in corporate video.
Brien brings a powerful pastiche of slides, video, film, and multimedia to illustrate stories from an era where thousands of people like him across the country somehow turned their desire to communicate into real careers with just a tape deck, a bunch of slide projectors, a primitive early-era computer... and crossed fingers.
You'll here success stories, horror stories, hilarious stories, and even hear how booze both jump-started-- and nearly ended-- his career.
You'll laugh, learn a few entrepreneurial business lessons, and also see the growth of direct to audience media grow from filmstrips to the internet, as technological changes move from a drip to a deluge.
45 minutes (adaptable to longer or shorter lengths, with video projection and stereo sound; q&a welcome. Contact via Email Here or on our Request Form.
It is, however, an interactive tour through forty years of low-tech, hi-tech, hi-jinks and highlights of a career derived from New York / New Jersey native and resident Brien Lee's love of media.
At age 6, he got a battery powered Mickey Mouse (both trade name and quality rating) projector. He took it to school to give a showing to his first grade classmates and learned his first audio-visual lesson-- toy battery powered projectors are no match for Incarnation School's full length windows.
"That's very nice, Brien,", said Sister Winifred. "Now sit down."
After years of funny phone call pranks featuring 78 rpm records and unimpressed stalkees ("That's very nice, Brien,", said harassed classmate Maureen Liddy), Brien turned to slides as a means of creating communications.
After producing well-received "tribute" side shows for relatives ("That's, very nice, Brien... now put that stuff back where you found it," said his tributee father), he began a business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that defied all odds and spawned a career that has lasted over forty years.
For one thing, it involved not video or film, but making sight and sound shows from slides. This was not the most portable way of selling for traveling salespeople ("What am I going to do with all this spaghetti?" was the cry of one client).
During that time, he produced commercials for the local serious repertory theater featuring pies in the face and talking buildings, staged a re-creation of Star Trek for 2000 vacuum cleaner salesman, flew a 50 foot tall vacuum cleaner on stage, watched tap dancers flair away on dry ice, reunited the Beatles with a dead Ed Sullivan, got involved in selling bleeding edge technology to other producers ("that was close, Brien", said his client from Walgreens) and basically rewrote the rules of using humor in corporate video.
Brien brings a powerful pastiche of slides, video, film, and multimedia to illustrate stories from an era where thousands of people like him across the country somehow turned their desire to communicate into real careers with just a tape deck, a bunch of slide projectors, a primitive early-era computer... and crossed fingers.
You'll here success stories, horror stories, hilarious stories, and even hear how booze both jump-started-- and nearly ended-- his career.
You'll laugh, learn a few entrepreneurial business lessons, and also see the growth of direct to audience media grow from filmstrips to the internet, as technological changes move from a drip to a deluge.
45 minutes (adaptable to longer or shorter lengths, with video projection and stereo sound; q&a welcome. Contact via Email Here or on our Request Form.