The Sorgel-Lee Team, circa 1981

• Sorgel-Lee Riordan (aka Sorgel-Lee Multimedia, Sorgel-Lee, and, after I left, Sorgel Studios)
• Brien Lee & Company
• Video Images
• Visuals Plus
• TVL
• Brien Lee Creative Solutions
• Brien Lee VideoStory

In all of these, I had hiring and firing responsibilities.

Most of these were in Milwaukee, with branches or side trips into the Chicago market, as well as New York / New Jersey market, where I am sitting now.

It’s a beautiful, temperate, sunny labor day morning. I’m sitting on the back porch typing, and thinking about a labor day with high unemployment rates and so little corporate reinvestment, in either equipment, outside services, or hires.

I’m looking over a nearly 40 year career and thinking about all the people that made it possible– the staff “laborers” who wrote scripts, mounted slides, directed shows,

Creative Solutions Team, circa 2001

Mark Augustine & friend

went on shoots, retyped scripts, cursed at computers, mixed soundtracks, edited video or film, and developed trusting clients. The people who were on the 24 hour edit benders, some miles from home, miles from the security of s normal job, who made me and our clients look so good. There were hundreds– we hired when the people were right, not the economy.

I think of creative suppliers who took our ideas and melded them into music, or animations, or dramatic footage, and the young “kids” with no resumes we hired who later became superstars in their own right. I’m proud of that.

I’m not going to name names. But do the math– one person was with me for 17 years, helped launch a branch in New York City, and worked on some of the earliest interactive video in history. A few others were with me for five years plus– including one person who pronounced s/he never stayed at one place for more than a year or

two. I guess we kept things interesting. I know we always trusted out employees’ talents.

As time flew by, some went on to start their own companies, or launch new careers in various new fields of endeavor.

They all had once thing in common– they took the work “labor” seriously. They worked hard. Beyond the call of duty. The learned lots, added much, and almost always

Amy and Dan edit a Walgreens spectacular

became better than me at their particular creative specialty.

I also had remarkable business partners over the years. But that’s a different story.

Here’s to hard work and hard workers. Happy labor day, and thank you, fellow workhorses.

I loved when he tuned in the radio on the windows sill with the puppet Pookie. It was a pop culture explosion– bits of teen hits of the day, followed by old time radio like The Shadow, The Hindenburg, and audio skits recorded for the radio bit, etc.

The song, “Do the Mouse”  was hilarious, as was the dance, which it was supposed to be– defining “irony” as a form of humor where bad equals good… or something.

When he returned from his suspension (for asking the kiddies to go through their New Year’s Eve hung-over parents clothes for pictures of George Washington) he blasted “Happy Days are Here Again” and showed film of silent movie pie fights, car crashes, etc. for almost five minutes before walking on set.

I did attend his big Soupy Sales Easter show at the Paramount Theater which featured The Hollies, Little Richard (and his guitar player, Jimi Hendrix), and as they say, many others.

Almost every TV show he did– five days a week– was outlined, but not scripted. And for all the hub-bub, he was only on in New York for two years.

But I think his kind of show– outlined, live, adlibbed, supposedly for kiddies, but really for teens who wanted to be treated like adults– was the exit point for the afternoon kiddy show and the entry point for things like SNL and “Fridays”– on the air barely ten years later. Letterman and Conan followed.

Just more proof that creativity is a continuum. Thanks, Soupy.

The local impact– on employment, community growth, local pride, freshwater recreation heritage– was never pointed out directly. It was there in the amazing visual documentation founder Carl Kiekhafer left behind of his surroundings through 16mm film and pictures. Mercury’s founding in Cedarburg. It’s purchase of the Coriam Farm in Fond du Lac to be the home of it’s amazing growth. It’s incredible impact on watersports, including Tommy Bartlett’s Water Show in the Dells. The national dealer celebrations Mercury hosted in Wisconsin.

I write this because today (Sunday, August 23, 2009) Mercury’s union rank and file will vote on whether to accept concessions in order to keep Mercury’s headquarters and plants in Wisconsin.

I don’t have a bone to pick or a dog in the fight. What I do know is this video demonstrates the incredible impact Mercury’s corporate culture has had on Wisconsin. To see it go the way of so many other corporations that have left, merged, been bought, or otherwise disappeared from the scene would be a distraught moment indeed.

We have short memories, and more and more companies seem to want to forget their past. The man who hired me for the Mercury gig, Ed Huck, often said “What’s past is prologue.” But what prologue is there if you ignore your past?

Here in slightly shortened form, is “50 Years of Leadership.”

Most are arts writers. All, including Johnson-Elie, who chronicled new business and minority business stories, and Borsuk, on Milwaukee’s volatile local education scene, can be considered important local-oriented reporters, whose detailed reporting on the arts, media, education, and small business gave an important and influential segment of the paper’s readership something to look forward to.

Jaques is a legendary name in Journalism circles. His father was a journalist, and Damien has been consistently and devotedly reporting on the arts for most of his career. Cuprisin brought new life to the TV-Radio section, following on the heels of early Sentinel efforts by Chris Stoehr and others, and always emphasizing the local ups and downs of Milwaukee’s broadcast media.

Sharma-Jensen, Tianen, Strini,  Borsuk, and Johnson-Elie owned their niches, and one wonders if they will even be replaced, or whether their activities will be merged into a one or two “combo” positions, echoing what happened to architecture reporting after Whitney Gould left.

I’m guessing the Journal-Sentinel will be happy to pay for freelance reviews. But behind-the-scenes analysis? Maybe not so much.

You can’t argue with the economics of the newspaper world. But you can argue with a medium giving up it’s unique selling proposition (USP). Local, local, local is what makes a newspaper or on-line publication different.

When big city papers started trying to be USA TODAY, their soul started to evaporate. You can read about Michael Jackson anywhere. What’s in the offing for the Milwaukee Rep, Symphony, Ballet, and so many more institutions, now that their  important voices are gone?

The Journal-Sentinel has yet to announce replacements.

I didn’t think information could come in spurts as short as a tweet. I forgot about something called telegrams.

I didn’t think about the web as a social place. Yet I’m as old as Walt Mossberg and used to hang out in the same “forums” on Compuserve and The Source.

And I didn’t see it as the ultimate distribution tool for video…. well, I did, but I didn’t expect it to kill off DVD’s and cd-roms. Now we urge our clients to create video just for the web– video that doesn’t even have to go “viral” to do the job. Just find your niche.

A lot of potential users of video on the web don’t get it, so they don’t use it.  They can’t understand the technology, or can’t envision a world beyond cable TV, DVD, or even giant sales meetings. And a good video might cost the same as a basic website, so they put the horse before the cart. These days, you need both– they are synergistic beyond belief.

So you’ve got to believe in the potential of what you don’t know– even if you can’t see what’s in front of your nose.

You can’t be aware of everything. But you can rely on the expertise and experience of good consultants to help point you in the right direction.

Brien Lee (that’s Brien with an “e”, in case you want to call or write. Really, we can see the future– we think.)

But in the summer of that year, we were asked by Ric’s friend Mike Kiefer (with some influence from Ric’s Dad) if we’d like to produce a slide show touting their company, Kiefer Corporation. A real corporate project! Kiefer sold commercial kitchen impliments and did custom stainless steel fabrication, and they wanted something to show at a trade show.

The answer was yes, the budget cheap, and I had my first real script to write. No relying on other people’s voices, this had to be written for a narrator. And since the budget was cheap, we couldn’t afford– and for that matter, didn’t know– an announcer.

My job was to write the script and produce the soundtrack to which the slides would be edited. And, I agreed, I would read the narration as well.

From an entrepreneurial standpoint, this was perhaps the critical moment in my development as an audio-visual person. My first script, my first narrative soundtrack, and my first (and I hoped, only) voice-over read. How I handled the assignment would define our house style for years to come.

I was a mimic in those days. I did impressions of Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny, George Burns, Kirk Douglas, Johnny Carson…. wait! Johnny Carson, Johnny Carson… Ed McMahon!  Budweiser. Clydesdales. Tonight Show Commercial Reader. Ed McMahon was the answer.

Short sentences, a good theme line, a low key personable approach. Ed McMahon didn’t write what he read, but he made it sound like it. I worked on the script, maybe 3 or 4 pages,  and I remember the final line– it was a direct rip-off of some Budweiser commercial read by McMahon:

” Kiefer Corporation. All… You’ll ever need.”

No explanatories, like “This is Kiefer Corporation, your leader in kitchenware.” No verbs. No complete sentences— and a dot dot dot to guarantee the pause in the right place. Hell, even I could read that, it was so clean.

Which I did. We lived in a one bedroom apartment which was distinguished by the fact that it had one closet for the entire apartment, in the back corner of what passed for a living room.

In that closet was all our earthly possessions, which, given that this was Wisconsin, included a bunch of winter coats. I set up my tape recorder outside the closet, fished the mike cable under the door, attached the Shure SM57 microphone, started the tape recorder and closed the door. I stood in between the coats to insure no reverb or reflections, and also to help give some bass boost to my voice. And I read. And reread. Until I could hear Ed McMahon.

I never read professionally again, but what I had done that day worked beautifully. It helped me define the words I would write, the music I would use, the style of our shows, and the pace of our shows.

It made us a real company, with a real industrial demo to show. It helped put us on the map.

Thanks, Ed McMahon. Your were all we ever needed.