HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Originally published in the Press Newspaper
It started out as hobby, of sorts. Then earlier this year, Oregon native Chad Vriezelaar took his computer savvy and a knack for bringing still photos to life on video and opened mymotionpictures, which he ran from a cramped office on Navarre Avenue.
The business developed as local customers brought their cherished pictures and mementos in to have them made into lasting, personal keepsakes on video, DVD or CD-ROM formats.
Fast-forward just a few months. Vriezelaar now sits behind his desk in his spacious suite of offices in Sylvania, where he and his staff are ready to expand the business and its customer base -- in a really big way. Come the beginning of August, he and his staff will launch the first-ever online movie studio, known as mymotionpictures.com.
The announcement follows a newly formed partnership with Seattle-based him development company, Photo-Works, Inc., which offers mail-order film developing, online archiving and albuming, and a new service that allows customers to send their existing photos to be scanned to their secure online archives.
Once the site is launched, PhotoWorks.com users will be able to upload their photos to the mymotionpictures.com web site to be made into full motion pictures. Personalized music may be chosen from private collections or from the site's online music library, or, the site is an Amazon.com associate, so users can purchase music from them. Even the techno-challenged should be able to complete the entire movie-making process with the help of a "MyDirector" wizard, Mr. Vriezelaar said. The finished movies can then be viewed directly as streaming videos, or delivered to your home on VHS, CDROM or DVD.
"This will forever change the way people see their pictures,” said Kraig Mackett, president of mymotionpictures. "We turn everyone with a regular camera into Steven Spielberg - when people pick up their pictures from being developed, they might, if they are lucky, look through them, but when they get a finished movie from mymotionpictures, they experience them.”
The partnership swells mymotionpictures' potential customer base, literally by millions. Currently, PhotoWorks.com recently surpassed 100 million photo images stored by consumers in its online archive, making it the largest collection of consumer photos on the Internet.
As the launch date approaches, Vriezelaar and Mackett are cautiously optimistic about the rapid growth the company will likely experience. If business takes off as expected, the company will need more space and more employees - anywhere from 50 lo 300
Mr. Mackett projected. "We feel that we can train workers to do what we need them to do in a relatively short period of time," he said.
Currently, the search for a site is being focused in Oregon, where it all began, Mr. Vriezelaar said, adding that he has been meeting with Dean Monske, director of the Oregon Economic Development Foundation.
"We're very excited about the prospect of having a high-tech Internet startup company like mymotionpictures.com here in Oregon," Mr. Monske said. "It's also especially gratifying because it's a local entrepreneur.”
"I love Oregon - they talk about brain drain in this area, but there's a lot of talent here - most people wouldn't think that Oregon would be the place to get a high-tech job, but I disagree," Mr. Vriezelaar said.
In addition to the web site launch, Mr. Vriezelaar continues to explore other avenues for the business. "In this business, it's critical to stay on the edge of creativity." he said. Currently, the company is in negotiations with Kodak for another innovative idea. "Movie in a box" would be a single-use camera that would allow users to capture special moments at weddings, birthdays, vacations, sporting events, etc., and receive both regular photos and a 10-minute movie complete with music and other special effects.
They have also been working with Eggleston-Meinert Funeral Home to create video memorials to be displayed as families gather to celebrate the lives of those who have passed away. Plans also call for working with schools, sports teams, etc. to provide video memories; to set up kiosks in malls to deliver their services directly to the public; and after that - "Who knows? There are so many possibilities, Mr. Vriezelaar said.
"Photographs are memories - add motion and music and they create emotion," Mr. Mackett said. "We want people to know that they don't have to put their photos in an album - there are many. many cool things they can do with them.”
For more information about mymotionpictures, call 842-0668 or visit the web site at http://www.mymotion.pictures.com.