By
Jim Baer
Technisonic, the St. Louis-based video production company lives
on the high end of service in this town. Companies and agencies
who hire Technisonic will expect to pay $275 an hour for video
production. By any standard, that could scare the pants off
the feint-of-heart that have to answer solely on costs to the
CFO and ranks alongside typical fees akin to silk-stocking downtown
law firms.
But it doesn’t faze decision makers who have to go back to the
boss with quality in hand. Polished and sophisticated videos
are Technisonic’s signature product. The firm has been in business
since 1929, providing high-end concept and audio and visual
media for television, radio, Internet, film, corporate videos,
DVD and CD-ROMs mainly for companies in the local area. They’ve
stood the test of time.
What the company does is a lot of TV commercials and high-end
corporate communications. They produce a boatload of DVDs for
the typical sales force telling that story that lasts anywhere
from three to 12 minutes in duration. “We try and keep them
10 minutes and shorter. There are great stories to be told,
but a persons’ attention span is short,” says Mike Stroot, CEO.
“We are often talking our customers down in length,” he says
matter-of-factly.
“We know our services cost a lot,” says Stroot. “Our clients
(mostly advertising agencies) know we have the best writers
and producers in town. We know that if we try and compete only
on price, we will begin to go down the slope towards oblivion,”
says Stroot, gesturing from behind his second-floor desk at
the colorful and chic facilities on Ewing Avenue. “We know we
are reliable and our clients know exactly what they are going
to get,” he says proudly.
His clients scarcely disagree. For instance, see what Joe Osborn,
principal along with Steve Barr at Osborn & Barr thinks. “Technisonic
always goes above what are our expectations. They treat us more
like a partner than a client. They give us good value for our
dollar,” he claims.
Cheryl Bergeron, creative director at Osborn & Barr concurs.
“Whenever we have a project and we need creativity, we turn
to Technisonic. They turn out a great quality product. They
have fantastic animations and they have the top editors in town,”
she says.
Vanessa Bock, broadcast producer at Adamson Advertising is also
in agreement. “They (Technisonic) work hard to deliver a quality
product. They are sensitive to our budgets and our due dates.
They are willing to work whenever to get the job done. It could
be late night, weekends, whatever time,” she claims.
Greg Sullentrup, Momentum’s creative director went one step
further. “We have a great relationship with them (Technisonic).
They make colossal efforts to meet our needs. They are very
creative and collaborative and they seem to make every project
even better than it was going in,” he says proudly.
High Definition shoot for Norwood Hills Country
Club membership recruitment video. |
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Technisonic has invested millions of dollars in post-edit equipment
and maintains five Avid edit studios in their modern and freewheeling
25,000-square-foot space inside a sleek industrial complex alongside
highway-64. Each edit suite represents a half-million dollars
or more investment. All high-end technical equipment is replaced
on a strict five-year cycle. The building has two very large
stages though they hardly ever get used since most shooting
is done on location.
All of their cameras and video edit equipment are in High Definition
format. So how does that work? It would be as if you were looking
through a highly polished window. Everything is perfectly clear
to the naked eye. High def is as far as the industry has developed
so far.
Technisonic has a garden variety of customers. Mostly, producers
and writers are coming and going from ad agencies like Momentum,
Cannonball, Osborn & Barr, and Moosylvania. The company does
a lot of work for the Missouri Department of Conservation and
edits commercials for Dierbergs and Schnucks.
Technisonic has endured the depression, a world war and a lot
of highs and lows to find itself one of the clear industry leaders
in a locally competitive field.
How they got started is a story unto to itself. In 1929, a professor
at Washington University founded the company at Forest Park
and the Barnes Hospital complex in the former Central Institute
for the Deaf building. The professor used the latest electronic
technology of the day to assist the hearing impaired.
By the 1960s and ‘70s, the company had become leaders in the
recording industry, including stamping the actual plastic records
with labels. Stroot pulled a 45 rpm record from his desk drawer.
“We recorded ‘Fool in Love’ for Ike and Tina Turner in 1960
on the Sue Records label,” he notes. The company was then operating
out of a facility on Brentwood Boulevard where the Galleria
parking lot in Richmond Heights stands today.
How Stroot got to Technisonic:. If you were watching local news
in the 1970s, you saw Mike Stroot on camera along with Duane
Dow, Russ Mitchell, Chris Condon, Max Roby, Julius Hunter, Sherri
Banks, Gene Tuck, Larry Badders and a bunch of other news reporters.
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Technisonic
Directors of Photography Doug Hastings and Tom Newcomb
shoot a marketing video for Hayward Pools and its
advertising agency, Osborn & Barr Communications.
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Stroot was an on-the-street reporter. He fondly recalls those
days. “I didn’t give a damn about news. I could care less about
fires and murders,” he remembers going back three and a half
decades. Stroot was the guy who came on two minutes before the
national news giving you that quirky and interesting local vignette,
ala John Pertzborn or John Auble.
By 1974, he was sick and tired of doing those concrete canoe
race stories at Washington University. He got an audition with
Hollywood’s George Schlatter and traveled around the country
with a video crew for NBC’s “Real People.” When he interviewed
in Los Angeles, Schlatter asked him what he wanted the most—and
he responded: “job security.” Schlatter told him to try selling
shoes back in St. Louis, but hired him anyway.
The money was good, he was based out of home in St. Louis, but
the show folded after one season. Hollywood producer Sandy Frank
was reviving “You Asked for It” and Stroot became the field
producer for that show, which lasted until 1982 when he returned
to town, taking a job as a KPLR news producer. A year later,
he jumped to Busch Creative Services “We were doing large meetings
and extravaganzas all over the country” and in 1987, he was
named president of Inner-Vision, a video production company
based in Maryland Heights which ultimately was owned by Anheuser-Busch.
In 1997, he became president of Tech-nisonic and pulled a Victor
Kiam maneuver in 2000. He liked the company so much, he bought
it.
Does he like his role as president and CEO? Not really. “I’d
rather be a producer. That’s where the action is,” he says.
These days, he walks around a lot, oversees the company books,
dishes out a lot of advice and makes sure his workers are happy.
He founded Civil Pictures, a non-profit arm of the company to
keep his editors and producers inspired. “You can’t make any
money producing historical pieces. You need a General Motors
to pay your bills,” he says, referring to historian Ken Burns
ability to create major epics. Civil Pictures has produced a
DVD on the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair and another on the construction
of the downtown St. Louis Arch. The debut for that was at a
gala at the Fox in August with Hollywood’s Kevin Kline doing
the film’s narration.
Life is good at Technisonic. Last year was the second most profitable
year in the company’s 77-year history. The management style
is unique. “I created management without layers. Our managers
are our doers and we all work in a very comfortable and casual
environment,” he says. Jackets and ties aren’t part of the dress
code.
Last year, the company produced a project for A-B that you won’t
see on your television screen. Stroot explains: “A-B wanted
to produce a commercial, supporting the beer industry in general
rather than their product specifically. They were feeling the
threats from wine and spirit manufacturers. They asked other
beer companies to join the venture, and there were no takers.”
An alternative choice was a website produced by Technisonic
dubbed here’stobeer.com, loading it up with a lot of history
and fun facts about the industry in general.
Technisonic will live on, just as long as their clients continue
to recognize top-rated quality and willingly pay for it. Judging
from the random comments of present clients, ownership has few
worries at this juncture.
