Turning Adventure into Profitable Enterprise – by Pat Broderick
[A Special REPORT that appeared in the San Diego Business Journal on September 2, 1986]
Wanderlust leads to love and thriving video production company
When the grizzly charged her, out there in the Yukon wilderness, everything seemed to shift into slow motion for Patty Mooney.
“There is this moment–in time and space–when everything slows down and you realize, ‘Somebody is trying to eat me.’ I was the one carrying the shovel. I might have used it, but I don’t know how much good it would have done.”
Fortunately for Mooney and her husband, Mark Schulze, their gold miner friend had a shotgun.
“He had to shoot it,” Mooney recalled. “But it didn’t seem to stop the bear. The third shot killed him, but by then he had come within about four feet of me.”
Chilling, yes, but for world travelers, adventurers and San Diego-based videographers like Mooney and Schulze, it sure beats sitting at a desk from 9 to 5.
Crystal Pyramid Productions and New & Unique Videos
The duo sit at the helm of Crystal Pyramid Productions, an award-winning, multi-service film and video production company; and its subsidiary, New & Unique Videos, which packages and markets special-interest home videos.
Working mostly out of their quaint “Hansel and Gretel” house in City Heights, the couple have built a thriving business by keeping their overhead low.
Like many entrepreneurs, Mooney and Schulze decided to transform their passions into a money-making enterprise.
In their case, their passions also involved one another.
Valentines Day 1982, a Day of Infamy
It was Valentine’s Day, 1982, and Mooney, who had yet to meet Schulze, was performing in the chorus of a play called “Pandora’s Box,” a World Hunger project.
“We were playing one day only in Encinitas,” she recalled. “I was standing on the balcony before the play began and Mark was setting up his video camera. He’d been hired to tape the event.
“He looked over at me and I looked over at him. I like to say our eyes met. I was still seeing other guys, but he said he knew it was love at first sight.”
Early in their courtship, Schulze invited Mooney to join him for a day in the mountains.
“We spent the day by a stream, talking, exploring,” Mooney recalled. As the day ended, we were perched up on a big rock watching the sunset.
“He said, ‘Will you go to New Zealand, Tahiti and Fiji with me?’ I was trying to go back to school and finish up a degree. But my philosophy is to follow your heart. That will bring you the most pleasure.”
Reaching the Summit Together
She said “yes” and soon found herself on a three-day climb up a mountain in New Zealand’s South Island. Her arthritic knee forced her to turn back.
“On the summit, it’s reputed that you could see both coasts,” she said. “He had brought his camera and I told him to go on ahead.
“I went back and fell asleep in a tin hut. Then I woke up and I looked up at the peak and I could see him.
“My heart opened up like a big flower. I thought, ‘That man loves me.’ I let down all of my defenses and realized that I loved him, too.
“I yelled out, ‘Mark, I love you!’ He heard me and waved his arms. He disappeared and it took him about 10 minutes to leap down the mountain like a wild man. He came and gave me a big hug and said, ‘I heard what you said.’ It was something out of a story book. We are hopeless romantics.”
After 2 1/2 months of backpacking around New Zealand, Tahiti and Fiji, the two quickly realized that they had finally met their soul mates.
“Mark’s mom said, ‘If you can handle living out of a tent for three months, you’re meant to be together.”‘
Deciding on Video Production
Back in San Diego, Mooney became involved in Schulze’s video business, lending her expertise as a massage therapist to a special interest video on “Massage for Relaxation.”
“A few days ago, we had an order for 300 of them,” Mooney marveled. “The Book of the Month Club made a smaller order. Suddenly, we’re more popular than ever.”
During those early days, Mooney supplemented their income by running her own typing business, while helping Schulze as he taped weddings and other small events.
“We were learning the way in the local production business,” she recalled.
Producing Special Interest Educational Videotapes
They hit their stride with a series of titles that included Common Sense Self-Defense for Women, Soaring in a Sailplane and Anti-Terrorism Weapons and Tactics, tapping into the expertise of friends and acquaintances.
“Basically, our first shows were about the things we had passions about or our friends had passions about,” she said.
While Mooney served as talent and scriptwriter, she also was getting calls at 2 a.m. from frantic students who suddenly remembered they had a term paper that needed typing.
“But they were willing to pay the rush charges,” she explained.
North American Journey
In 1986, it was time to hit the road again.
“We sold everything and left someone in charge of selling the tapes and running our mail order business,” Mooney said “We rented out our house.”
With the money they made from disposing of some furniture and other items, they bought a camper and set off to discover America on their North American Journey.
Their odyssey took them up the coast to Los Angeles, to the Trinity Alps, along the Oregon Coast, and eventually to Alaska, where they met up with the gold miner who was trying to stake a claim.
And that grizzly bear.
It was also the place where they encountered their first mountain bike, a discovery that would prove to be the inspiration they needed for their video business
In fact, most of their nine-month, 25,000-mile adventure was marked by incredible timing.
“We were heading down the Eastern Seaboard at the time Boston and New York were at odds during the World Series,” Mooney recalled. “And when the Red Sox were winning we were in Boston. Then we were in Salem for Halloween and met some witches. And we were in New York when the Mets clinched the World Series.”
By the time they made it through the Florida Keys, New Orleans and Texas and, eventually, back to San Diego, the two were almost tapped out. But they had enough funds left over for a couple of mountain bikes.
Mountain Biking Way of Life
This latest passion would later inspire their award-winning epic video. “Full Cycle: A World Odyssey,” their quest for “the best mountain bike ride on earth.”
The production, described as a sort of an “Endless Summer” (a surfing classic) for mountain bikers, featured “gravity defying” stunt riders and such locations as the Southwest’s vistas, Canada’s wilderness, Costa Rica’s jungles, rain forests, volcanoes and beaches, Greece’s ruins and Mt. Olympus, Switzerland’s Alps. Great Britain, Australia, Tahiti and India, including treks to Mt. Everest and the Himalayas.
The adventure video also boasts an original music score, and helmet-cam, aerial and underwater shots.
Someday, Mooney and Schulze may create another epic, but for now, they are focusing on their business clients, producing corporate image and training tapes.
Broadcast Segment Video Production
CPP clients include the ABC network, the ACLU, Centre City Development Corp., City of San Diego Waste Management, Cox Communications, Southwestern Cable, C-SPAN, ESPN, and the San Diego Motion Picture & Television Bureau, among others.
The duo also have an eye on Hollywood, where they’d like to start writing and producing independent motion pictures.
But in the meantime, Mooney and Schulze say they are happy just to be.
“If we were millionaires. we’d have too many responsibilities,” Schulze said. “It’s a nice balance to have just enough money.
“We don’t need fancy houses or cars,” he added. “We’ve got everything we need already. We feel rich. We have freedom.”
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BY PAT BRODERICK, Staff Writer
Patty Mooney is a VP, Video Producer, Sound Technician, Teleprompter Operator and Video Editor at award-winning San Diego Video Production Company, Crystal Pyramid Productions. For more adventures, enjoy our blog, Diary of a Video Production Crew
