July 4, 2003

Largest Metroplex Audiovisual Production Companies
Ranked by 2002 local gross billings

#8 Eyecon Video Productions

September 6, 2002

Largest Metroplex Audiovisual Production Companies
Ranked by 2001 local gross billings

#8 Eyecon Video Productions

Largest Metroplex Audiovisual Production Companies
Ranked by 2000 local gross billings

#10 Eyecon Video Productions

December 5, 1997

And the winner is ...

Eyecon Video Productions in Dallas snared seven national industry awards for its video projects this year.

Two of the awards were given for stories shot for the Cable News Network. CNN Sports hired Eyecon owner Greg Coon to shoot a Father's Day special about golfing legend Dave Stockton and his son at the Byron Nelson Golf Classic in Irving.

The CNN newsroom also asked the company to profile children taking bull riding lessons from world champion bull rider Don Gay at the Mesquite Rodeo.

Two other awards were earned by marketing videos for American Airlines/Eagle Cargo and QuickCARE.

See the Awards

With Investment, Eyecon Looks to the Future

Greg Coon has known he wanted to be in pictures since the 10th grade.

"You always have these great ideas about becoming the next Steven Spielberg," he said, "but this is reality."

And in one corner of Coon's office suite, on a couple of sturdy-looking tables, sits his reality and the hope for the future of his three-man company, Dallas-based Eyecon Video Productions.

The haphazard-looking collection of electronics is the Media 100, Data Translations Corp.'s latest and greatest digital video editing system, and a new camera utilizing Betacam SP videotapes. Eight months ago, Coon said, he borrowed $65,000 for the package knowing it would change the way he does business, and who he does business with, forever.

Eight months later, he said he made the right decision, and has the roll call of new clients to prove it. It was all a matter of knowing how to capitalize on an investment in technology.

"If I were to look back eight months ago, I would never have thought in my wildest dreams I could have come this far," he said.

With a client base of about 40 companies, including CNN, CBS, AmeriPlan, American Eagle, and Caltex Petroleum Corporation, Coon said he's seen his business pick up about 100% over where it was a year ago.

Editing on the Media 100 "is like the difference between a typewriter and a word processor," he said, outlining the differences between the old and the new systems. "A lot of our project revolve around the Media 100 and what it can do. It allows us to use our creative minds in ways we couldn't have in the past."

Technology allows Eyecon Video to "take on almost anything"

"Before, I wouldn't take on certain projects because I didn't have the ability to handle them, but now I can take on almost anything. The scope of what I can do is just huge."

Coon's computer can do just about anything any of his larger competitors can do, including the subtle touches that make his stock in trade - corporate training and communication videos - seem like a product of one of the network broadcasters. Images fade in and out, lights rise and fall, details are enhanced and flaws are obliterated. In fact, Coon's Media 100 may have rendered obsolete the video-editing suites that cost his larger competitors hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Obsolescence is a very big factor in the video industry these days," said one of Coon's competitors, Jeff Schum of On-Line Video.

Schum said falling technology prices are creating a new type of competition in the industry he's followed for 14 years. Many of the bigger companies have substantial investments in old technologies, he said, and they're beginning to worry about the small startups with little overhead that can produce similar quality.

And even more worrisome to the big guys, he added, is that they're beginning to lose their top editors to the lure of inexpensive technologies.

"It's getting affordable now," Schum said. "You can go down to the bank, get a loan, put up a shingle, and you're in business. It's all digital, it never hits analog, and guess what? Joe Blow can be a producer."

Coon said the Media 100 stores audio and video information as digital information, ones and zeros, on computer disks. That means making changes in a given video is as simple as re-encoding the ones and zeros at any point in the program. And that means that anyone who can pay for the technology can do anything any other video producer can do.

It's a technology that Coon is banking on to bring in the high-end production business that before would have gone to the relatively big guys in the field like Showcase or Criterion Productions.

There is no reason, he said, not to compete with the larger video production companies any more. Even at about $45,000 - roughly an eighth of Eyecon's annual revenue - the system is too inexpensive not to allow competition with larger companies.

In fact, Coon said, with technology effectively removing the gulf between the big and little fish, competition between them has dwindled largely to a matter of marketing.

"Before the Media 100, I had an SVHS camera and edit system," he said, "The SVHS camera and edit system, if lit correctly, will look all right. It's an economical way to do videos, but for the high-end clients, the (Media 100) and Betacam SP is the way to go.

So Coon said he became one of the few small business to embrace digital-editing technology. The Media 100 was a perfect match for Eyecon, and Coon was able to capitalize on every trick in the computer's book.

"I can now compete, and in many ways beat, many of the competitors, just because their overhead is so high, and because of our creativity. So much of what they do is cookie-sheet video, assembly-style productions."

Jerry White, a business professor at Southern Methodist University, said this kind of hypercompetition is evolving among a number of industries, and technology is the catalyst. Because technology makes it easy to manage a business while it eliminates much of the biggest hurdle - the expense - there is little reason for entrepreneurs like Coon to hold back from starting their own business.

"Technology empowers you to cut costs and that is why it is permeating every nook and cranny of business today," White said.

But the blossom of new business and new competition comes not only at the expense of some larger companies that are reluctant to change, but also at the expense of the entrepreneurs themselves. For people like Coon - currently the little fish in the pond - that means tougher and tougher competition as the waters fill with other little fish.

Surviving in that environment requires planning and a willingness to stay ahead, White said.

"I tell people (to) maintain a body of capital you can use to maintain your technology. You don't always have to have the latest, but you do have to be in the race," he said.

Coon said he is not afraid that the next "latest and greatest" generation of video production equipment will be bought by some upstart coming to run and his someday-obsolete Media 100 out of business, even thought he conceded that the technology has become so inexpensive that just about anybody can implement it.

In part, he said, that's because Eyecon Video has struck a deal with Media 100 to get all the software updates provided for an annual fee of $1,500. Any time the company comes up with something new and improved, he said, they'll automatically send it to him.

But if Media 100's competitors build a better system, Coon said, it won't mean the end of Eyecon.

He said he would fall back on his creativity and those niches in the market that aren't so adamant about the latest and greatest until he could rebuild.

"There's such a huge variety of customers who need a huge range of quality, so if the Media 100 were suddenly to be lacking, there would still be plenty of clients out there. But so far, that hasn't been the case. The Media 100 editing system has really been the leader in broadcast quality editing."