From Web sites to commercials, Euro-Pacific does it all

Couple draws on their expertise in multimedia services

BY KATHY HALL Staff Writer

BY KATHY HALL
Staff Writer

PHOTOSBYFARRAHMAFFAI staff Above, Lisa Moss (r) co-owner of Euro-Pacific Film & Video Productions, works with editor Leah Smyk Chapman at the office in Shrewsbury. At left, Moss works with husband and partner, David Calderwood.PHOTOSBYFARRAHMAFFAI staff Above, Lisa Moss (r) co-owner of Euro-Pacific Film & Video Productions, works with editor Leah Smyk Chapman at the office in Shrewsbury. At left, Moss works with husband and partner, David Calderwood. David Calderwood and Lisa Moss of Euro-Pacific Film and Video Productions Inc. use their skills in visual communications to help promote causes they admire and produce award-winning documentaries, videos and commercials.

Their Tinton Falls office walls are covered with plaques and citations ranging from a Videographer Award of Distinction for Moss’s “Visionary Woman Award 2003,” produced for Moore College of Art & Design’s annual fund-raising awards dinner, to a 2004 JAMIE Award (Jersey Awards for Media Innovation and Excellence) for Calderwood’s “Plug Plucker,” a commercial about a fishing lure retrieving device.

The Videographer Awards is an international awards program directed by communications professionals.

Euro-Pacific is a full-service facility, offering concept-to-screen production for everything from corporate training to broadcast television documentaries in a variety of media, including video, film, CD-ROM and DVD.

The company also does Web site design and hosting, DVD authoring, film transfer, multimedia content for conferences and a variety of computer graphics, among other services. In addition to the New Jersey location, Euro-Pacific has an office in London and is part of an international co-op with affiliations in a number of countries.

Calderwood started out working behind the scenes in feature films in his native New Zealand, then moved on to TV commercials and finally into corporate marketing. Prior to founding Euro-Pacific in New York City in 1990, he had been a cameraman, director and producer of corporate training and promotional videos, television commercials and documentaries.

“In the ’90s international production was huge, but after 911 it dropped off,” Calderwood observed. “It’s just started picking up; we’ve done more international work this year than in the past three years.”

Moss began her career as a writer/producer of slide shows for the Environmental Protection Agency. She also served as vice president of communications for the National League of Nursing, where she founded the video department and produced videos on subjects from nursing management and theory to alternative healing methods such as therapeutic touch.

The couple met at the ISTVA International Television Association Conference in New Orleans. Calderwood was president of the organization’s New Zealand Chapter. It was pretty much love at first sight. They married in June 1991 and came to New Jersey in 1994.

“We moved here because of Geraldo Rivera,” Moss explained. “We had a friend who was a makeup artist for him. We went to a party at his house and liked the area.”

The couple feel that Monmouth County is an ideal location for their company, which serves clients in Philadelphia and New York.

Euro-Pacific currently has three full-time and three part-time employees and “an army” of freelancers, including camera operators, audio technicians and narrators.

Calderwood is also the founder of Shoots.com, an online production crew resource, which lists 10,000 video professionals. He sold the crew booking service but retained the Web site, which gets between 150,000 and 200,000 hits a month.

Euro-Pacific’s largest client is National Cable Communications (NCC), a company that sells advertising on national cable systems.

“Let’s say Ford Motors wants to buy a spot on all the cable systems,” Calderwood explained. “NCC will buy all the time. We create the local ad inserts, so the client effectively buys a national spot by buying a series of local ads. We do something for them every week.”

Projects range from the simple phrase “ ‘Trading Spaces’ is brought to you locally by …” to creating and running the entire campaign.

“We just finished one for Subway for a promotion. To win a trip you have to go to a Web site. We did the commercial and created the Web site,” Calderwood said.

Their work is seen on all the major cable networks, including CNN and MTV through NCC’s buys.

Moss and Calderwood generally work on projects separately.

“Some of the projects cross over, but we each do separate work,” she said.

Calderwood focuses primarily on corporate clients.

“Corporates come for sales and marketing programming,” he said. “Training is always big; sales and marketing are picking up again.” Calderwood also produces a lot of conference materials, including setting up live video feeds.

Calderwood’s noncorporate projects have included Telly Award-winning documentaries on Key West Race Week for the Outdoor Live Network and an introduction to super-aircraft carriers, both of which still screened in the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum’s surround sound theater.

His favorite project was another award winner that he created for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. He spent 14 months working on the one-hour project (commissioned by the agency), which documented the UN’s history through the voices of the interpreters.

“They are really witnesses to history,” he explained. “They attend every meeting.”

Calderwood interviewed hundreds of interpreters from all over the world, including some who had worked for the League of Nations. The oldest was 98 and had been at the original meeting when the decision was made to form the UN after World War II.

“It was a secret meeting and it was determined that the UN would have to be in the United States, so we wouldn’t pull out of it,” Calderwood said.

More than 400 people, including the Secretary General of the United Nations, attended the premiere in 1995.

Moss focuses on nonprofit clients and recently completed an interactive video titled “Insights into Children’s Temperament,” based on the work of Sandee Graham McClowry of New York University. The video uses puppets to teach children and parents about the basic temperaments of children. Each is a simplification of a human personality and presents both the strengths and qualities that may concern teachers and parents of each type of child.

Nonprofits also use videos for training, but they are increasingly using them as a fund-raising device, Moss noted.

Moss recently completed “MRT: Past, Present, Future,” produced for the endowment campaign for Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls. The video won a Videographer Award Honorable Mention.

Many of Moss’s clients are in Philadelphia, where her work is often funded by the Independence Foundation.

Her favorite project is a 20-minute video celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia.

Leah Chapman of Euro-Pacific edited 20 hours of material to create the piece, which was written and directed by Moss. They are working on expanding the piece to an hour-long presentation suitable for television.

“There are over 2,400 murals in Philadelphia,” Moss said. “It has more public art than any other city.”

The mural project was founded by muralist Jane Golden, who introduced graffiti writers to mural making. She also involved major muralists and every political entity to use art to bring neighborhoods together

“Working on a project like that was a total joy,” Moss said.

Additional examples of Euro-Pacific’s work can be seen at their Web site www.euro-pacific.com.