Firms Tap Industrial Film, Video Explosion : Show business: The market for training and marketing tools lures local companies with a reliable if unglamorous source of income.

Tucked away in corporate offices and small production companies, far away from the crowd at Morton’s and unlikely to be spotted at Spago or Le Dome, toil the producers, directors and actors who fuel a different kind of Hollywood--the $2.9-billion market for industrial films and video.

“I moved out here from the South to make avante-garde films,” said producer Clay Harrison, who owns Half Day Video in Burbank. Now, Harrison has changed the name of the production end of his company to Industrial Films, and is concentrating on making films and videos for companies to use as sales and training tools.

He’s not alone. About 5,000 industrial film companies are competing nationally to produce films, videos and other media presentations for use in business, said Tom Hope, who publishes Hope Reports, a trade publication about the business.

The companies are mostly small. Harrison’s company clocks in with about a dozen employees and $2 million in annual revenue--about a third of it from industrial films. By comparison, one of the biggest companies in the industry is Maritz Communications in Fenton, Mo., which brings in about $75 million a year, Hope said.

The industrial film field has exploded over the past several years, with membership in its trade organization, The International Television Assn., ballooning from 300 people in 1972 when it was founded, to more than 13,000 today. Because it is considered more stable than traditional television and film work, many companies that had concentrated solely on entertainment have begun to focus on corporate productions over the past two to three years, among them Harrison’s Half Day Video and Dick Clark Productions in Burbank.

The companies produce films and videos--often for budgets as high as $1 million each. And in the case of Maritz and other large companies, they also produce slide shows and live presentations for use at company meetings, in sales and training presentations, conventions and other areas.

Sunkist Growers Inc. in Sherman Oaks recently hired Dick Clark Corporate Productions to produce a 20-minute film for the citrus co-op to show tourists and other visitors to its headquarters. A company film, said Sunkist public relations manager Claire Peters, “can tell our story. It can tell who we are as a business.”

Corporate films have come a long way since Henry Ford trained a camera on a Model T for a promotional movie.

Two years ago, McGaw Inc., a pharmaceutical and medical equipment company in Irvine, hired MultiMedia Presentations in Culver City to produce a video for use at a trade show to boost its image with pharmacists.

Rather than focusing on McGaw and its corporate assets, MultiMedia hit upon the idea of using Aretha Franklin’s song “Respect” to dramatize the idea that pharmacists don’t get enough respect from doctors and nurses. So instead of a lecture about McGaw’s time-tested procedures for making intravenous drug tubes, pharmacists at their convention saw a rollicking tribute to their profession.

That video, according to McGaw’s vice president for corporate communications, is still being requested by enthusiastic pharmacists, and it has revitalized the company’s image.

Besides image, corporate videos and films are used to define sales strategies, teach employees how to operate new equipment and convey messages from top executives.

“These people aren’t just there to applaud the new products,” said Doug Spitznagel, president of MultiMedia, about the people who corporate films are designed to reach. “They want to know what the strategy is. They want to know what’s going to be affecting them and their franchise in the future.”

GTE, for example, produces 400 videos a year, about a third of them at the company’s 15,000-square-foot television facility at its Western division headquarters in Thousand Oaks. The phone company, which employs 50 people nationwide in a video division called VisNet, is putting the finishing touches on a satellite transmission system that will enable GTE to conduct interactive broadcasts with employees nationwide.

In Thousand Oaks, as well as its other regional headquarters including Stamford, Conn., and Irvine, Tex., GTE is bringing in revenue with its video studio by leasing its services to television producers and selling its training tapes to other telecommunications companies. The company also produces videos for outside firms. They account for 10% to 15% of the total GTE produces.

Paul Murray, a partner in The Association, a Burbank-based production company, said his firm moved into corporate films to survive the wildly cyclical television business.

“Financially, we had to find a broader client base,” said Murray, who said that 70% of his company’s $1.5-million business last year was in corporate production.

The Association began a vigorous push for new customers, sending out promotional material to thousands of companies, and eventually landing clients such as Hughes Aircraft and Princess Cruises.

“We have to get two to three new clients a month,” Murray said. “We started at 600 mail-outs a week and we’re up to 2,000 a week now.”

Similarly, Dick Clark Productions started its industrial film arm when business was slow in traditional television. Compared to three networks and a few cable companies as potential clients for its entertainment shows, “we have hundreds if not thousands of customer prospects” for industrial films, said Trudi Rohla, senior vice president for Dick Clark’s corporate productions division. So far, Dick Clark has made, or is in the process of finishing, about 12 films and media presentations, for companies such as Isuzu and IBM.

Unless a production company has signed a guild contract, however, corporate films and videos are typically non-union, so production costs are lower than on guild productions. Wages for production people are also lower, but the field still employs thousands of cinematographers, directors, producers and actors.

Lawrence Purcell, a camera operator who used to work mostly on TV commercials but now does a lot of corporate films, says the steady work makes up for the lower pay. Last year, Purcell said he worked on projects at Japanese and U. S. auto plants, and was able to compare for himself the manufacturing methods at the two places.

Those who came to corporate films from the entertainment side say they bring a sophistication to their work that companies like. Because employees and sales prospects have grown up watching TV, these producers and directors say, they expect high quality from corporate videos too.

And some who have made the switch say they don’t want to go back.

“I know people who are in feature films, and you’re either a top dog or a bottom feeder,” said Spitznagel of MultiMedia, who originally came to Los Angeles to work in feature films. “I have no interest in being a bottom feeder.”

“This is not fine art,” said Gary Schlosser, West Coast manager of media development for GTE’s VisNet. “But it does have elements of art in it.

“It’s not something that’s going to wind up on Bill Cosby,” continued Schlosser, who was nominated for an Academy Award in the 1960s for a documentary about cowboys. “But that’s the way it is.”