According to Leonard, he started shooting on mini-DV because people are more relaxed and natural when faced with one guy wielding a small camcorder — no large camera crew maneuvering big equipment. That is, once they realize that one guy with a backpack is all they’re going to get from a national TV show.
“The funny part is that I’ll call somebody up and say, ‘The Today show’s coming,’” he says. “And you can tell that their hearts are broken when I show up, because they’re expecting a big crew. I arrive with just a backpack and they’re going, ‘This must be ‘Today, Muncie, Indiana.’”
Portable Editing Suite, No Waiting
In early 2002, Leonard realized the benefits of his new equipment when he traveled to Salt Lake City to cover the Winter Olympics. “I wouldn’t have proposed [covering the Olympics] if I didn’t have the PowerBook, because I didn’t want to go there and stay up all night waiting for the editing pool to open up,” he explains. “At the Olympics, there are very few editors and a lot of people doing stories, so you end up editing from 2 to 10 in the morning.”
“You don’t feel like you’re missing life. I’ve edited on the front porch of the house and see people pedaling by and I don’t feel like I’m missing summer.”
In all, he filed 10 videos from Salt Lake City, editing on his 12-inch PowerBook in front of the hotel fireplace, as well as on the airplane, going and coming. “Even though I think they know it exists in the industry, people were still pretty shocked to see how simple it was just doing it all on this tiny little piece of equipment,” he says.
Brendan Leonard, Regular Guy. “The Brendan Leonard Show” featured “regular kids doing regular things,” according to his dad.
Brendan Produces a Cult Hit
Not surprisingly, Leonard’s love of home video and visual storytelling has rubbed off on his family. It seems that the kids — and their Apples — haven’t fallen far from the tree. In fact, his now 20-year-old son, Brendan, produced his own cable access TV show on his PowerBook while still in high school. The head of programming for ABC Family saw some clips and gave Brendan his own TV series, which aired in the summer of 2003.
Called “The Brendan Leonard Show,” it featured the unscripted wacky antics of Brendan and his neighborhood friends. The show became a cult hit with teens, spawning dozens of fan sites, with some fans even making surprise pilgrimages to the Leonard home in Winnetka.
Brendan, his dad and his older brother, Matt, teamed up to edit the 40 half-hour episodes that made up the season, working from their second floor family room and from anywhere else they and their PowerBooks could go.
“Since that show has been on, he’s gotten all kinds of calls from LA,” says Leonard. “A movie producer came out and took him under her wing and we had a bunch of meetings with other people. He’s got all these other options now that came out of his head and putting stuff into a computer.”
The Leonard family, which recently formed its own production company, Picture Show, is working to launch a web-based show with original content. “Every one of us in the family has an Apple laptop,” says Leonard. “It’s what our company works on, it’s what Brendan’s whole show was put on.”
In addition to creating two videos a month for Today, Leonard is currently working on a documentary featuring his parents and on home movies documenting the lives of each of his four children. Brendan, who seems destined for a broadcast career as well, recently snagged a gig with ESPN.
Can You Hear Me Now? Brendan Leonard shows off his communication skills in his video “Instant Mess.”
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
It’s comfortably fitting that a man who got his break by making home movies can now spend more time with his family and still get all his work done whenever and wherever he chooses. “You don’t feel like you’re missing life,” says Leonard. “I’ve edited on the front porch of the house and see people pedaling by and I don’t feel like I’m missing summer. So I think that’s really a cool thing.
“And the biggest thing, too, is having my kids available, having enough equipment and powerful enough equipment that my kids can have their own visions done this way. They don’t have to get a job at a $200,000 editing suite. They’ve got it here.”
“It’s amazing to me that I have this little 12-inch computer that this stuff is coming out of,” he adds. “It’s like the biggest ideas are coming out of this small thing. It’s so damn simple.”