Local First: Grand Rapids Street Party

On Saturday we shot and edited a video about a street party in downtown Grand Rapids for Local First, an organization that connects local businesses and supports sustainability, collaboration and education. View the party highlights below:

Business Review Story Features Creo: Small Businesses, Big Screens

Lynn Stevens of Business Review wrote a story on how the film and video industry is impacting West Michigan, including those taking advantage of the new film incentives. She also talked about Creo Productions, and how we're approaching the industry differently.

The section about Creo Productions is below; the full story is available here:

Creo Productions in Grand Rapids is at another point on the spectrum. The company's founders, Aaron Carriere and Andrew Tingley, aren't interested in making movies for theaters. The two-year-old company is a member of the alliance, but its distribution plans involve other formats. They make documentaries, podcasts, online videos and related Web materials.

"What we sense is that the whole communications model is changing, how people are getting information is changing, how people are telling stories is changing," co-founder Carriere said. "People are starting to do a lot of experimentation with video -- I think that's going to continue. Stories have a place to be heard now online."

Creo is finalizing a contract with Lifestraw, a microbiological water purification system made by Danish company Vestergaard Frandsen, headquartered in Switzerland.

"What is the global water situation? We're going to make a video about that," Carriere said. "A lot of people know, but a lot of people don't know. Here these inventors in Europe are working with a small company in Grand Rapids because we can tell stories. The way communications is, there's no limit to the size of stories you can get a hold of or the impact you can make. You don't have to be an enormous company to make a big impact."

Rapid Growth Story: LifeStraw and Creo Productions

Rapid Growth did a short story on our upcoming project with LifeStraw, a personal water purification tool. You can click to read the story below or click here:

June 19, 2008

Swiss inventor taps Grand Rapids filmmaker to market innovative water purifier

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Forbes Magazine calls LifeStraw one of the 10 Things That Will Change The Way We Live and Grand Rapids-based Creo Productions has partnered with its Swiss manufacturer, Vestergaard Frandsen, to create a video that markets the product globally.

LifeStraw is a drinking straw with an instant microbiological filter that removes disease-causing waterborne bacteria. It fits in a pocket or satchel and costs just $4. Users, many of whom live where there is no clean water supply, use the straw to drink directly from rivers, streams or pots of well water.

The 2008 UNICEF Handbook On Water Quality reports that some 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water, and over three million, mostly children, die from water-borne diseases annually.

Last January, Creo co-founder Aaron Carriere, 26, was in Ecuador and ate fish he and friends had speared in a contaminated stream. They all got sick and suffered severe dehydration in the jungle.

“I’ve never had to deal with being so sick because of the water,” Carriere says. “I came back and said what can I do about this, there’s people that live like this daily.”

Carriere contacted Vestergaard Frandsen and about a month later came up with the idea to create a video the company can offer on sermonspice.com, where members buy videos to play for their organizations and churches. The video is currently in production.

“We’re going to reach an audience for LifeStraw that they haven’t reached,” says Carriers. “Sermonspice.com has 90,000 members. You take a local video, load it to the web site and immediately it goes international.

“We’re a two-man company,” Carriere adds, “and for us to have an impact on the world is great.”

Source: Aaron Carriere, Creo Productions

Rapid Growth Article

There's a story about Creo Productions and our move to our downtown studio in today's Rapid Growth newsletter. Here's an excerpt:

New video/audio studio houses "21st century storytellers" on Avenue for the Arts

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Based on the philosophy that the Internet is changing everything—communication, shopping, advertising, and entire industries—one Grand Rapids video studio has relocated to 40 S. Division and set a course for leveraging the Digital Age.

Read the full story online here.