If Blue Chip Films has successfully made the jump from corporate video to documentary film and TV work, Francisca Bogdan has moved in the opposite direction since moving to the United States.
Today, Bogdan runs Creative Video Corp. in Norwalk, which focuses nearly exclusively on corporate and commemorative videos. Her clients have included General Electric Co., Pepperidge Farm and Xerox Corp. among others.
Before moving to the United States in the mid-1980s, Bogdan worked on documentary films in her home country of Chile, including one on the rainforest that she thinks helped bring about a change in environmental policy there.
Bogdan entered the industry as Massachusetts-based Avid Technology debuted computer servers and software that revolutionized video editing.
“I saw myself in a digital world, and I realized there was a niche at that time at delivering their communications in a more efficient way,” Bogdan said.
With software now readily available to create video and graphics and post it online, specialists like Creative Video Corp. continue to find a niche. A website called ProductionHub.com lists 20 corporate video companies in Fairfield County, a partial list of the available pool of production options that expands mightily if including New York City and Westchester County, N.Y.
Despite the competition, Bogdan found a ready market immediately, with her first significant contract producing a video on GE”™s preparations for the anticipated year 2000 computer glitch.
In 2007, a commissioned piece she did on the life of an early woman aviator took a bronze medal in the New York Festivals International Film & Video Awards. And two years before, a GE piece she did took the top award at the New York chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.
The corporate video industry has its own Cannes festival ”“ the Cannes Corporate Media and TV Awards, largely the province of major consumer products companies. Last year”™s winners included Boehringer Ingelheim, which has its U.S. headquarters in Ridgefield.
In corporate top-heavy Fairfield County, video production remains a competitive industry.
“For me, it was a challenge ”¦ It was like, ”˜You are giving me this opportunity, I will not let you down,”™” Bogdan said. “You make a mistake with video and they are not going to hire you again. I”™m an extension of them.”
