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| Johnstown
Men Make Movies near Hollywood |
By
Sandie Biddle |
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JOHNSTOWN –
Hollywood movie moguls routinely travel to far away places and
remote locations to produce feature-length films. However,
it’s not often video directors from Johnstown travel to
Southern California to film location footage.
Joe
Workosky, John Concannon, and Tom Concannon, all Johnstown
residents, recently completed a week of intense video
production at a Reliant Energy generating facility located in
the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, a few miles from
Hollywood.
The
local men traveled to the Los Angeles area to create a safety
DVD for the Etiwanda Power Plant located in Rancho Cucamonga.
The program will be used in educating and training contractors
and visitors to the plant – raising awareness about the
rules and regulations of working there. The plant burns
natural gas to produce electricity for use in the greater Los
Angeles region.
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“Safety is a
matter of life and death and we believe the DVD created by
Joe, John, and Tom will ensure delivery of a consistent safety
message to our contractors and visitors,” said Lee Moore,
Etiwanda general manager. “During a planned outage, we may
have hundreds of contract workers on site each day and each
one will have to view the Etiwanda safety program before their
job begins.”
Workosky and Concannon have helped train thousands of workers
in the utility, manufacturing, and railroad industries with
their safety DVD programs.
According to Paul Lacroix, Etiwanda environmental and safety
representative, “The first priority of my job is the safety
of personnel at the station; the second is to comply with all
government and corporate regulations. This program stresses
specific rules for on-site workers and covers processes and
procedures unique to our plant.”
During their California mission, the trio videotaped station
employees at work in the control room, machine shop, and crane
bay. Exterior views of the plant featured the main office,
turbines, generators, and cooling towers.
Workosky and Concannon took advantage of California’s clear
skies to get a birds-eye perspective by shooting aerial
videography and still photography from an open-door
helicopter.
“We spent weeks writing the script prior to our western trip
and, after a lengthy approval process, the final version was
approved,” Workosky said. “The script – complete with
corporate, union, and OSHA guidelines – became our blueprint
for shooting the on-site video scenes and will be used to
create a Spanish DVD version, too.”
Workosky and Concannon are veteran industrial filmmakers, each
with three decades of experience in this specialized field.
They’ve produced many projects together as a two-man team;
however, for this long-distance production they enlisted
additional assistance.
Concannon’s brother, Tom, is executive commercial producer
for Fox 8 TV in Johnstown and is an expert videographer.
He’s responsible for the production of many of the TV
commercials seen on the local Fox 8 affiliate and ABC 23, too.
“We invited Tom on this cross-country journey to provide
additional camera angles and help us cover the large
generating facility in an efficient and cost-effective
manner,” John said. “As we shot the 20 hours of videotape,
Tom’s experience proved invaluable for Joe and me during
this complex assignment.”
Workosky, owner of The Graphic Works, and Concannon, president
of Interact-Interactive Media Systems, teamed up five years
ago to specialize in the creation of customized safety DVDs
for business and industry. The men have completed similar
safety projects for clients in Texas, Illinois, and New
Jersey, in addition to numerous cities throughout
Pennsylvania.
The men have also produced TV programming for national
broadcast and cablecast outlets; marketing DVDs for travel and
tourism bureaus; and TV commercials for political campaigns,
auto dealerships, trade schools, and other local businesses.
They plan for the DVD to premier in California at an Etiwanda
Safety meeting in mid-summer. ~PBC |
©Copyright 2007
King Publishing, LLC
1305 W. College Avenue • State College, PA 16801
814.867.2222 |
You
can contact us to discuss your next project by:
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email: |
jconcan@interactusa.com |
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phone: |
(814) 255-1229 |
|
mail: |
John
Concannon
201 Elknud
Lane
Johnstown, PA 15905 |
We
have a demo DVD available for qualified companies.
We
look forward to working with you.
Check
out more video on our YouTube site. |
