In the director's chair

Here it is.

Proof that Reno, too, can be the center of a film industry.

Andrew Johnson president, designer, producer, and the creative force behind iMed Design, inc. sits in his home office,mouse at the ready,monitors lit, laptop buzzing.He's directing a live video shoot.

The rest of the crew? They're in New York.

It's an eight-hour shoot, and from it Johnson will cull a 30-minute marketing video.

But he won't be leaving his Reno aerie to do it.

"It's the empowerment of the technology," says Johnson.

It's empowered him to move his New York-based design, animation, and video production business to Reno.

It empowers him to hold meetings with clients in London, as well as New York, sometimes combining folks from both continents, plus himself.

Johnson built his business over several years in Syracuse, N.Y.,with clients such as Kodak, the New York State Fair, and regional companies.He created marketing videos, broadcast spots,Web sites, interactive CDROMs, DVDs.

His production tools include 3D, animation, video and audio.Anything a computer can do, he says.And computers now,with a skilled designer at the helm, can do almost anything.

So it was that when Johnson ran headlong into a brick wall of personal frustration, he had the tools to turn that emotion into a video and a new business venture.

The brick wall was infertility treatments for him and his wife.

The frustration was the ineffectiveness of the treatments for them, and their unsatisfied quest for information on the subject.

That frustration became a two-DVD video.

That video became the first of a line of videos under the Healthvues logo.

Now running parallel to the business of marketing and promoting products via technology, Healthvues is Johnson's passion.

The first video set,"Infertility Explained," is marketed through Amazon.com, soon to be on the Barnes & Noble site, and directly marketed on Johnson's own site as well.

The marketing is straightforward, via book and DVD distribution channels and the Internet.

The development structure of the project grew organically out of Johnson's quest.He needed access to top experts in the area of infertility.How to get entree into those closed quarters? Find a partner with clout, he says.

And that's what he did.

Early on in the process, he met Alice D.

Domar, Ph.D.

She's the founder and director of the Mind/Body Program for Infertility at Boston IVF, but more importantly, she's a woman with clout.When she placed a call to other top figures in the field, they listened.

They then took Johnson's call, sat for interviews, shared stories, concerns, issues.

Partnering with clout does more than open doors, too.

It adds credibility, helps guide the dialogue, and in the end becomes part of the marketing process.

Johnson's move to Reno in December came in the midst of the marketing phase of "Infertility Explained." The move has not slowed him or the business.

For the video interviews, he's flown all over the country, something he can do from here as well as from New York, he says.

But surprisingly, he saw a bump in his media business when he made the move West.

He explains: "For the last three years in New York,most of my clients were local.

I began to use the Web and electronic transmissions more and more."

He wanted his customers to see that they could work long-distance with him.

It worked.

None of them strayed.

Now, he says, they like to brag about how they videoconference with their West Coast production company.

Johnson, though has done the opposite.

He's begun to reach out to local professionals.

And that's not because he couldn't freelance out technical work just as easily long-distance, he says.

It's because he likes working with people locally, people like the Rose-Glenn Group and Tanglewood Productions.

The design/marketing business is running parallel to his passion, which has not slowed with the completion of the "Infertility Explained"DVD.

That was just the beginning.

The one currently in production is on adoption, says Johnson.

That's another subject to which he's close.

His four-year-old daughter, adopted at birth, sits beside him tapping away on her own computer while he works on his animations.

His partner with clout on that one is Patricia Irwin Johnston, author and Perspectives Press publisher.

He's already got 14 hours of interview on tape for it.

And next up? More Healthvues titles, he hopes.He's in early development of videos covering organ donation and end-of-life issues.

The message of "Infertility Explained" is in the path people follow to find the child they're supposed to have.

The other Healthvues titles will explore similar paths.