1980
This really happened... Purchase Point, in London, sent me to Hawaii to shoot for an incentive module they were producing for Xerox. When my night flight arrived late into Honolulu, the guide I had hired was nowhere to be seen. Soon there was nobody left except me... and this girl. She was in the same situation, sort of. Anyway, she offered to be my guide and model for the shoot, and I took her up on her offer. For many years, Monique Keao and I stayed in touch, as I would often go to Hawaii. Monique, where are you?
1980
Through John Whitcomb, then at Pran Audiovisual in New Braunfells, Texas, we were hooked up with Cadillac-Fairview, the Canadian real estate goliath run by the Bronfman family of Seagrams fame. They were expanding into US markets and John was building marketing centers for their new properties... for which we made AV shows.
1980
Most of the work we did for Cadillac Fairview was in Texas. First was a show about the history of Fort Worth. Then we started a project for a tower in Dallas. It dragged on and got caught up in the move-out of the 73rd Street studio. After closing Incredible Slidemakers, I first went to live in Dallas for several months, finishing the show, while the container moved to Hawaii.
1980
The studio was housed in a town house formerly known as The Wannamaker Mansion. Over the years, as the business grew we came to occupy the basement and four floors. There were fireplaces in every room... and for good reason: we were living in an antique with an 18th century heating system. One time nobody was there when they delivered the firewood... can you imagine a two-chord pile of logs on a Madison Avenue sidewalk? We were so popular with the neighbors.
1980
One day on a flight between Kauai and Oahu I sat down next to Sandra Sande. By the time the plane landed a half-hour later, we had planned to meet in her native Canada. During my visit to Canada she agreed to meet me in New York after I closed up the studio there. From there we went to Denver, bought a classic 750 Yamaha from Ron Fundingsland and rode it back to Vancouver.
1981
About six weeks later, in June, my container arrived in Honolulu and the fifth major chapter of my life began. The entire concept of moving to Hawaii should have been suspect from the start... but at the time my ego was assembling it's own version of reality. Anyway, I bought an old car, put all the stuff in storage at The Space Place, and moved into the basement of my friend Allan Seiden's house. I made a deal with Cliff Hinton at Convention Audio Video Company (CAVECO) and set up shop.
1981
I arrived in Hawaii with the expectation of setting up a multi-image studio in Honolulu. With the help of my lifelong friend Allan Seiden, a successful writer living there, I staged a huge demo at the Sheraton Waikiki. But it didn’t work. Hawaii wasn’t ready for big-time AV and mainland producers wanted to come to Hawaii themselves. Within a year I had run through the money and started selling “Hawaiian Panoramas” on the Honolulu zoo fence to pay rent.
1981
At almost the exact time I ran out of money in Hawaii, Lindsay Rodda called from Australia to ask for help producing a Ford show. He also wanted me to teach his staff at Sonar Graphics the kinds of special effects that had polished my reputation. Sandra and I arrived at Lindsay’s house in Melbourne having been married in Vancouver the week before. His house featured a huge pool and he was an attentive host, together with his friend and colleague Bette Murray.
1983
Sandra's 22nd: a cake decorated with an Australian Koala Bear and served up in Melbourne. Australia was good to us and for us. We worked hard but had fun and lived in a New World. As our employer, Lindsay Rodda, was the ultimate "organization man," we had sufficient time off to travel around, and I even wrote a feature-film screenplay.
1982
If it's August, we must be in East Marion, Long Island... that’s how it was for years. It’s where the Mesney family had vacationed since 1955. In 1982, Sandra and I visited my parents and two sisters there (Sandra is behind the camera). That was the last time for me and since then the little cottage has been replaced.
1983
Chris Korody at Image Stream saved my ass after my second attempt at making in Hawaii left me selling tourists photos in the Honolulu "Zoo Fence" Art Show. By then Sandra Sande and I were a tight team and Chris brought us in to help out on a Yamaha show, working with Ted Iserman, Brad Hood, and Bill Aylward. Image Stream was Camelot… the best people with the best tools making the best shows for the best clients. After hours I would give Julio Campos programming pointers, which he has long since put to good use.
1984
Sven Lidbeck (center) and Kurt Hjelt were the original partners in Audio Visual Centrum AB (AVC). Saab Automobile was a client. But AVC had never done the kind of big show that Saab’s Lars Einar wanted for the launch of the Saab 9000. Lars had visited my studio in New York after seeing our stand at NAVA. He told AVC he wanted me to do the show. Thus charged, Sven Lidbeck called me and offered the job ...and a week later Sandra and I arrived in Sweden.
1984
Lars Hellquist and I traveled all over Sweden photographing the operations of Linjeflygg, the domestic division of SAS. It was all shot in the winter, and mostly in northern Sweden. Since then I have never, ever complained about being cold. We spent endless hours debating dissolve rates, “third images,” AVL versus Dataton, Hasselblad versus Nikon, etc.. Lasse makes the best moose stew and his homemade snapps isn’t bad either.
1984
By the winter of 1984 Sandra and I had been in Sweden for 10 months. We were doing Saab and Volvo simultaneously with two groups of freelancers, mostly from the Incredible Slidemakers and Image Stream families. AVC sent us all on a Christmas ski trip. Left to right: Andreas Wherli, Susan Shields, Wendy Kauffman, Sandra Sande (seated) and Kark Shields.
1984
Bengt Sundlin snapped this at Gibraltar when the two of us made the haul down there from a Saab shoot in Malaga, Spain. From our base by the beach we would drive into the Sierra Mountains to shoot the new Saab 9000 in relative secrecy. . Bengt didn’t mind complicated set-ups and one night watched as he set up colored strobes around a replica Rodin “Thinker” …in 25 below zero Celsius weather.
1984
Sandra and I spent a long weekend visiting St. Petersburg. It was my first trip behind the famous “Iron Curtain.” You felt intrigue... thinking about all the hidden cameras and microphones recording you. We went off on our own one day, got totally lost, and had the best time because of that... debunking propaganda. At a nightclub we watched a Russian band do perfect imitations of major Western pop groups.
1984
Filip Jarnehag, Sandra Sande and Juki Nakamura in Norway, on a Saab shoot. We all worked for AVC then... Filip was my Forox camera effects student; Yuki was one of the two company photographers. Most of the Saab photo work was done in Norway. You could shoot winter stuff on top of the fjords and summer stuff in the valley. Wherever you go there it is hard to go wrong in terms of pastoral, scenic spendor.
1984
All decked out for the world premier of the Saab 9000, at Kolmorden, Sweden. Behind me are Sandra Sande and Bo Ströman, AVC’s account manager for Saab. Next to me is Kjell Gustafsson, staging. It was a brand new luxury hotel but the power took huge hits from the kitchen and we couldn't get the show to work. In the end an Army generator was called in, and that’s what ran the show.
1984
After the launch show for the Saab 9000, Lars Einar, our client, organized a 900 Turbo for us to take on holiday. We drove down through Sweden’s glass country and across Norway to visit Sandra’s ancestral home in Sande. Then we drove it all the way to North Cape and down through Finland to Helsinki for a side trip to St. Petersburg. Finally, we ferried back to Stockholm... a month-long odyssey I’ll always remember.
1984
At the PhotoKina multi-image festival in Cologne, Germany, the 30-projector show "Hawaii...Xanadu" was a big winner. But there's a story: The festivals projection-grid manager, in a patrician gesture, assigned all key jobs to students. When the show ran, instead of animated sequences people saw random chaos... things like a jellyfish on a girl's face. But the crowd went wild anyway and the show won. Taught me a lesson.
Hawaii - Xanadu (Movie digitally reassembled from a VHS tap of original slideshow)
Alternative Video: WebM format
The original slidewhow using 30-projectors on a single screen - presents 2,400 animated slides in about 3 minutes, accompanied by the popular song “Xanadu,” sung by Olivia Newton-John. I thought, at very least I will hold the land speed record for slides.
1985
I received the Mediatech Programming Award twice, the first time an Ikea show, “Building It Is Half The Fun.” The actors played in slow motion while we shot at 4 frames per second using Nikons with motor drives and 250-exposure backs. The animations were played back using 15 projectors aimed at a single screen. People were surprised slides could “move” and high-speed shows became my signature style for many years.
1985
Elisabeth Ivarsson was the AV-products sales rep for Kodak in Sweden so we saw each other with regularity at AVC. At a multi-image festival in London, we took things a bit farther and in rather short order shared quarters on Hornsgatan. When we won an AVL sales contest, and went on a Carnival Cruise Lines trip to the Caribbean, it was the highlight of our relationship. But two’s company and three are a crowd... and when she didn’t get along with John Emms very well I had to make tough choices.
1986
When AVC went bankrupt it left me high and dry... I didn’t even have enough money to go home -- and where was home, anyway? The year before, Sandra had left me after I committed a major indiscretion with a gal at work. Broke (again) and alone, I set up shop across the street from AVC at Hornsgatan 100, Saab crossed over with me and became my mainstay client until 1992, when I returned to the States. (See PDF of 1986 article re: Mesney and AVC )
1988
Film crew for the Saab 9000 CD wrapping it up after a week-long shoot in Sweden. After Lars Einar retired, Thomas Lagerqvist took over. He and his doon-to-be-wife, Lena, became good friends. Filip Jarnehag and Juki Nakamura were also on the team (right side) as they had been at AVC. The acquisition of Saab by General Motors spelled change and it was the last time this team worked together.
1987
The Saab 9000CD-launch show was a mega event held at the Acropolis in Nice, France. 2000 VIPs and dignitaries attended. They were entertained by a 1-hour musical Operetta put together by Hans Hiort. Stockholm's Philharmonic Orchestra performed Hiort's score, together with a massive chorus and troupe of 50 dancers. The musical traced the history of luxury personal transport through the ages, positioning the new Saab as a luxury car.
1988
The launch show for the Saab 9000 CD, at the Acropolis in Nice, France, was the biggest show I had done to date. I celebrated by bringing my mother and father over from New York to see it, together with Elisabeth and Anna. Don Southerland, a freelance NY journalist I had hired as the studio’s PR guy, was also there. It was the last time that I saw my father as he passed away the next year while I was in Sweden.
1987
Stockholm in the early 80’s was gastronomically challenged. Being well traveled, my tastes went considerably beyond Swedish meatballs and herring. To preserve my culinary sanity and explore Epicurean fantasies I taught myself how to cook and renovated the kitchen with an extreme IKEA makeover. Not one for moderation, I soon became so enmeshed in the kitchen that when I returned to the States I opened a restaurant of my own, called Fork Inn the Road.
1987
On the left, the original set-up at Hornsgatan 100 in Stockholm, and on the right, the same room 6 months and 15 projectors later. Eventually, 30 projectors would crowd into the same space. There would have been more if there were enough electricity. The image library, then some 500,000 slides, can be seen in the background.
1987
Chuck Kappenman was always trying to get me to use his TVL system, but I never did. Video has always been somehow foreign to me... I don't think in video terms, perhaps. Instead I see more icon-ish images. I want to lead the mind, not direct it. I'm a Maxwell Parish fan and for me there is nothing like an extremely large, very high quality (i.e., very high resolution) picture.
1988
The multi-image industry's death knell had been sounded. It was all hands on deck... SOS... the ship was going down from its own weight and complexity. Soon an economic "correction" (contraction) and the rise of video and PowerPoint would finish it off. Marketing became key to survival, so AVL held a sales contest. I was a dealer and for the Saab show I sold myself enough gear to win a place on the Carnival Cruise to Jamaica.
1988
AVL cruise to Jamaica: Chris & Jerry Hurd from PMP Marketing, Rocky Mountain states manufacturers rep for AVL. They are two of my favorite people. When Sandra and I bought Ron Fundingslands bike, we headed for Vancouver but stopped at the Hurd's in Park City Utah to pay a visit. They told us to look up Charlie Watts and Bruce Silverstein in Seattle. We did and ended up doing a Microsoft show for them and a Boeing show for Bob Peterson.
1988
At the awards banquet for the Swedish Bildspels (Slide Show) Festival, Kurt Helte, founder and Managing Director of AVC, AB -- Audio Visual Centrum -- in Stockholm (left) clowning with artist Rune Soderqvist. Kurt is wearing Incredible's "No Charge for Dust!" button as an eye patch. Above, Kurt is seen with Maria Lindstrom, his personal assistant.
1988
D&D had built and installed the giant 40-panel, rigid-plastic RP screen we used for the Saab launch show in Nice, France, and through that job I got to know Eric Dillens. Then D&D returned the favor and asked us to do content for a Gemeentekrediet trade fair stand in Brussels. Together with Burson-Marsteller Brussels, I thought D&D could feed us the business we would need for the Brussels headquarters of Incredible Imagers.
1988
Jan Robbrechts, at Burson Marsteller, hired us to launch DHL’s Brussels Hub. Mediatech’s Bob Jackson and Angela Green spearheaded the building of a rooftop VIP lounge for our 30-projector show. The screens slid apart to reveal the huge hub operation all dressed up with a spectacular laser-light show.
1988
Mediatech built a theater on top of DHL's existing hangar office wing. It housed a VIP lounge and theater for 200 people to see a 30-projector show with six screens that slid apart to reveal a panoramic vista view of the giant hub operation in the hangar beyond, lit with lasers and stage lights. Workers in ultraviolet-light-sensitive costumes glowed, as did the packages on the conveyors. Audiences cycled every two hours. All this was the brainchild of Arthur Havers, then Marketing Director for DHL in Europe.
1988
18 countries in three weeks ...the airplane was my hotel. The show schedule was so tight that it justified taking the Concorde (...yes!). In addition to the show, I was shooting for what would become one of DHL's most important resources... The DHL International Photo Library. To make it, 350 of the best shots were duplicated into 50 sets and distributed to key offices and agencies globally. It created a universally consistent (and approved) visual identity worldwide. It was the brainchild of Arthur Havers and Jan Robberechts.
1988
On the around-the-world DHL mission I shot their facilities, people and activities in 18 different countries. The photos were originally used in the 30-projector multi-image show used to launch their Brussels hub. Then we produced a number of off-shoot promotions, one of which was the 1990 company calendar.
1989
The best 350 photos from the global shoot were released as the DHL International Photo Library. The library was sent to every important agency and office around the world in order to create a unified, pre-approved collection of images that defined the company and provided a corporate portrait shown "in the right light".
1988
The graphic on the left was made by John Emms to promote the Stockholm studio, called Epic Productions. However, the Swedish patent office disallowed the name Epic on the grounds that it infringed on Epic Records. I decided to fall back on the name “Incredible” which had served so well in New York. It is a decision I regret because of its pretentious qualities. However, that afforded John the opportunity to make a new graphic, seen on the right.
1988
John Emms mastery of the Maron Carrel rostrum camera is evidenced by these two logos. His expertise went for beyond the camera itself, into darkroom procedures and photo theory. Keep in mind that these were made without the benefit of PhotoShop. Artwork was a collection of 10-field cells made by hand. The Maron had a control computer with 128k RAM. Emms was expert at plotting complex X-Y-Z camera moves.
1988
Two more masterpieces by John Emms made on the Maron Carel camera. Although these logos are deceptively simple looking, they are actually extremely complex in terms of artwork. For example, every repeat of the logo in the Incredible spiral has it's own positive and negative cell... all done at "10-field" size ("letter" sized). John Emms was not only a master technician but also a glutton for (self) punishment.
1988
My sister Kathryn Mesney-Hetler and her late husband, Lou Hetler, in a photo taken on a Christmas visit to their home on Vashon Island, Washington. It was as a result of that visit that I ended up building a studio on Vashon and going to live there after returning from Europe. I asked her to keep her eye open for a suitable house… she called three months later and it was a done deal.
1988
Lasse Haldenberg played the Swedish Chef character in the show "Swedish Meatballs." His character was loosely based on the Muppets character. The storyline of the show is that CNN's Burt Wolf has come to Sweden to learn how to cook the famous meatballs. As the Chef blunders, Wolf cuts away to stories about Swedish culture and lifestyle... the real intent of the show.
1988
Swedish Meatballs was shot at Stockholm’s Grand Hotel. We'd come in at midnight and shoot 'till early morning. It got pretty silly at times, especially when we started setting off the smoke bombs. Filip Jarnehag was my indispensable helper. Yuki Nakamura is in the BG at right with a slightly worried hotel manager. Juki has a good eye. Filip makes things happen.
Alternative Video| WebM format
1989 Swedish Meatball Slidehow (digitally reassembled from a VHS tape)
1989
Always one to have fun at the expense of AV, the importance of slides was satirized in a demo show for Kodak. “Got To Be... SAV” was the name of the show and it was made to celebrate the 1,000,000th SAV slide projector. The illustrations were hand made darkroom assemblies as this was well before PhotoShop. Fifty copies of this 4-projector show played around the world at various Kodak functions and exhibitions.