Entrepreneur Bridging The Gap By Patricia Schiff Estess April 1993 *Photo Caption: Whether she’s taking time out at New York City’s Pierre Hotel, or off on a video shoot, entrepreneur Judith Lasch (center) never forgets who her most valuable advisors are: her children. (Clockwise from top: Amy, Beth and Callie) (Credit: Catherine Gibbons) *Text Caption: Judith Lasch, owner of Lasch Media Productions, a video production company in Red Bank, New Jersey, agrees. “On our cable show, we have to know the workings of all sorts of cameras, wires, and technology,” says Lasch. I couldn’t [run this business] without my daughter Beth’s technical skills. She’s challenged by the whole thing; I’m terrified!” Relatively Speaking Many segments of their 10-year-old cable show, “Focus on New York,” deal with subjects that have special appeal to 20- and 30-somethings, so it’s not surprising that Judith Lasch, owner of Lasch Media Productions, listens carefully to the advice of her three associates, daughters Beth, Amy (30-year-old twins) and Callie, 32. And certainly, the Red Bank, New Jersey, production company’s latest video, “Faces for Teens,” would never have gotten off the ground without Amy’s makeup expertise, Callie’s script and Beth’s editing . . . along with Judith’s marketing. Videography Magazine 10th Anniversary issue Profiting in New Video Niches By Edmond M. Rosenthal July 1993 *Photo Caption: Beth Lasch sets up for a shoot with a Panasonic chip studio camera. Judith Lasch muses aloud about some day producing a TV show based on the exploits of her three daughters. The four women are, collectively, Lasch Media Productions, of Red Bank NJ, and like most small production companies they have their share of busy days and hectic weeks. Daughter Callie shakes her head disparagingly as her mother starts, “Well, if Designing Women can be successful….” Antics aside, however, the fact is that Lasch Media Productions represents a growing trend in small video companies: solid success. The newly integrated-under-one-roof efforts of the four enterprising women already compromise a full plate. With more than half of their efforts going into promotional videotape production, the rest falls almost evenly into production of commercials for local and national cable, infomercial programming for cable, commercial home videos and editing of family videos. For the first time, Editor/Producer/Technical Director Beth Lasch is working with her own offline editing equipment, including Sony 3/4-inch and Panasonic S-VHS VTRs and editors, a Panasonic MX-50 special effects generator, and a NewTek Video Toaster. The story of how the Lasch women got where they are would at least make for a strong series pilot. It would start out with a widowed mother managing the careers of win daughters Amy and Beth as actresses in commercials while finishing her high school education and working all the way up to a master’s degree. It would end with four separate-but-related careers culminating in Lasch Media Productions. After a series of less-imposing jobs, Judith emerged as a fashion executive and authority on modeling and teen self-improvement. Her entry into the video world came ten years ago, when she launched the still-running multiple infomercial program Focus on New York on Manhattan Cable. Her focus now is on sales and marketing. Callie studied at the Sorbonne and the School of Visual Arts in New York. A scriptwriter, producer, and creative director, she has done corporate videos for companies like AT&T and fund-raising video for The United Way. Meanwhile, Amy and Beth grew weary of being the adorable identical twins of commercialdom. As Beth puts it, “What really got us was standing under these hot lights and saying these stupid sentences while everyone around us was being creative.” Creativity for Amy meant becoming a stylist and makeup artist. Although she participates in the family venture, her independent career has involved clients like soap star Genie Francis and rock group Skid Row. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Soap Opera Digest, and on record album covers. After attending the School of Visual Arts, Beth gravitated from one bottom rung to another æ at ad agencies, a film editing company, and then video production and editing facilities. While her school learning got her as far as doing a basic assemble edit, no one was interested in advancing her career in her places of work. “I learned how to do insert editing by watching,” she recalls. “Then, when everyone left, I would go in and practice editing. Then I convinced my mother to let me do the editing on Focus on New York rather than hiring other people. I rented space at International Video Services and learned by trial and error. Someone would help me if I got into big trouble.” Beth says of this work, “Making the cuts isn’t hard, but making it look as good as network TV without paying the price is what counts. You have to be creative in how you place your shots. Instead of doing a 10-minute-long shot the way you’re taught in school, you can break it up into three-minute segments and get more information into a shorter period of time.” Beth is now phasing out the business she ultimately developed, In Focus Productions, as a separate entity. She has been specializing in location videotaping, working both as cameraperson and editor. Clients for promotional videotapes have included the Environmental Defense Fund, and perfume maker Guerlain. She reports learning of such opportunities through facilities where she brought her work for editing and others where she did freelance work, as well as from networking at industry parties and events. Promotional videos, generally 8-12 minutes long, bring in anywhere from $1,500 to $15,000, depending on such variables as the camera used and the range of choices from shooting a speaker in a conference room to having “lots of special effects, modes, and setups.” Another option is letting the client do the shooting, in order to keep costs down, with Callie operating as a consultant in scripting, storyboarding, and even coming up with the concept. Beth notes, “If they’re not hiring someone to shoot, they can put more money into editing. And they like to feel they’re more a part of the team.” Focus on New York shifted from weekly to monthly airing two years ago because, as Callie puts it, “We were looking to change our focus.” With all the segments paid for, the Lasch enterprise takes in upward of $5,000 for a single half-hour show. Judith points out, “We don’t waste clients’ money with multiple takes when they’re not needed.” By and large, Beth adds, “Callie gives [paying participants] a list of questions that will be asked in advance of the taping, and ten-minute take takes ten minutes.” Lasch has recently started two more sponsored cable shows, these for national distribution to cable systems looking to fill local origination channels. The Video Reviewer reviews special-interest videos, and The Franchise Form provides information to prospective franchisees. The first commercial home video for the enterprise, Faces for Teens, combines the talents of all four Lasch women in a $19.95, 45-minute cassette on makeup approaches. Judith reports it has sold more than 5,000 copies so far through schools, libraries, and Girl Scouts of America æ for leaders to use in sessions with their troops. A forthcoming video on classic cars was to be launched at a local car show, with footage from that night itself included æ processed overnight from the first day and ready for distribution on the second day. Judith prefers distribution through libraries, organizations and advertising in specialized magazines using distributors, who expect up to 65 percent of the retail price. Music stores, though, will be used along with magazine advertising to sell a two-hour concert of Richie Sambora, of Bon Jovi fame, taped in Red Bank. Beth handled the main camera and hired three more camerapersons. For editing, Sony 3/4-inch SP equipment on side is a VO-9800 player and a VO-9850 recorder. There is also a Sony Hi8 EVO-9850 editor, a Panasonic S-VHS AG 7650 player, and AG 7750 S-VHS editor-recorder. Beth comments, “The AG 7750 is powerful enough to record frame-by-frame renderings of 3-D images of the Video Toaster. Some other editors cause too much strain on the machine and drastically reduce its life.” Beth notes the Panasonic MX-50 special effects generator “does really great stuff, like wipes, dissolves, painting, stop action and strobe effect. It allows you to do a trail image; you can pick up a picture and manipulate it while another picture comes in.” She adds, “The Video Toaster allows us to render graphic images and serves as an excellent character generator as well as providing 3-D animation. The wipes are really a lot of fun because they’re digitized and you can have a wipe of paint drops coming down or a golfer taking a swing.” “We specialize in interformat editing,” Beth continues. “Using the MX-50, if Hi-8 is shot in one location and S-VHS in another, we can use both of those formats in an A/B roll situation and he mix that onto a 3/4-inch master. Some people bring in old home movies that are shot on S-VHS and also have some in Hi-8. We can put it all on an S-VHS tape. We use the MX-50 to mix between them and pt in the special effects for transition.” Now that Beth has her own facilities, she is able to do all her offline work in the Red Bank office and take it to an online facility when it needs to be put on one-inch. She also expects to make her facilities available to independent producers who want to do a rough cut there. Looking ahead, she says, “In a year, we’ll have a capability where independent producers can make an edit decision list from a timecoded shot list, put the final decisions on a disk, and that disk will interface with an online facility æ and all the numbers will have been programmed already so the online automatically edits from the disk. All the machines we have here can read SMPTE timecode. The only thing we need is the computer to output this information onto the disk that we take to the online facility.” Beth does most of her shooting in S-VHS and Hi-8, but uses a Panasonic one-chip studio camera to videotape photos and slides and, admittedly, to impress some clients who aren’t impressed unless they see a large studio camera. “Shooting on Hi-8 is great,” Beth concludes, “but I would never make a Hi-8 master, because the format is not developed enough for ease in editing. Instead, I shoot on Hi-8 and edit on 3/4-inch æ and it’s very competitive in quality with Betacam.” *Text Caption: Whether editing consumer home videos or corporate work, Beth encourages clients to sit in on edit sessions. The Bridge Spotlighting the Lasch Family Date1987 *Photo Caption: Left to right: Callie, Amy, Beth and Judith Lasch (Credit: Danny Sanchez)     The Lasches are an all-female family of four who produce “Focus on New York,” a weekly cable television show which airs in New York City. Judith Lasch, executive producer, founded the show with her daughters, Beth, Callie, and Amy. This past September, they celebrated their sixth year on the air. The show has produced business profiles for national and local corporations, as well as numerous non-broadcast video projects. Begun as a consumer education show, “Focus on New York” has since set standards for local cable business programming. The business profiles provide maximum exposure for companies seeking to promote themselves to prime-time, upscale-target market. The show maintains a prime-time spot Tuesday evenings at 8:30 on Manhattan Cable Channel 23.     The Lasches have another show to their credit, a cultural television program that aired in mainland China. Judith acted as the American co-host and producer for “China-American Exchange.” Callie was creative director; Beth, technical director; Amy, make-up artist and hair stylist. “They tried to teach me Chinese, but it proved to difficult to learn in a short time, so my part was voiced over,” says Judith. “The girls had a more difficult time; they had to edit in Chinese!”     Recently, the Lasches were honored by New York mayor Edward Koch for their dual participation in the Adopt-A-Class program. The Adopt-A-Class sponsors guide junior high school students through “real life” experiences involving workshops, projects, trips, and discussions. The sponsors also provide the students with goals by serving as role models. The Lasches adopted a class of seventh graders from the Alphabet City section (Avenues A through D on the lower east side). As sponsors, they gave the students the opportunity to produce a 15-minute segment to air on “Focus on New York.” In addition, the Lasches’ company, In-Focus productions, taped the other Adopt-A-Class projects for the Mayor and the Board of Education. The tapes are being used to heighten awareness in Adopt-A-Class sponsor training seminars and to encourage other school districts across the nation to implement similar systems. “It used to be our seminar leaders who got the highest marks on training evaluations,” according to Ann Einsinger of the AAC project. “Now the videos do!”     Their own adopted class produced “Advice to Adults,” giving tips to parents and teacher on handling such issues as divorce, drugs, AIDS, education and war. Other projects documented by In-Focus included one in the South Bronx which coupled young students and elderly people at a senior center to bridge the generation gap, and another which involved a Long Island whale-watching expedition!     The Lasches maintain Monmouth County residence. Beth, Callie, and Amy live in Red Bank; Judith, who resides principally in Manhattan, keeps her home base in Middletown. All four graduated from Brookdale. Amy continued her studies at University of Arizona; Beth went on the School of Visual Arts in New York. Callie attended the Sorbonne, University of Paris, and School of Visual Arts. Judith is presently completing her Master of Arts in Women’s Studies at CUNY Graduate Center.