Minds Eye: Kevin DeWalt's big adventure - Minds Eye Pictures

TAKE ONE, March, 2002 by Christine Ramsay, Ken Wilson

When you think of Saskatchewan, you probably think of vast fields of wheat under a towering Prairie sky. You probably don think about a thriving film and television industry. Well, think again. Total production volumes have grown from $5 million in 1990 to $60 million in 2000. In fact, Regina-based Minds Eye Pictures calls itself the biggest privately held entertainment company west of Bathurst Street (Toronto). As CEO and Chairman Kevin DeWalt says, "there's no reason why we can't have a film industry right here," and many share this vision: The Edge Productions, Independent Moving Pictures and Westwind Pictures in drama; Autumn Productions, Cooper Rock Pictures and Emmy award-winning Partners in Motion in documentary; Tyndal Stone Media in new media; and the Saskatchewan Filmpool Co-operative in art cinema. However, says director and Minds Eye shareholder Rob King, "No other company here has managed to do what Minds Eye has done, although many have tried."

Born in Moose Jaw, DeWalt is probably the only film and television executive in Canada who was inspired to enter the business after seeing Richard Attenborough's epic Gandhi in Bombay "The reaction of the audience was incredible," DeWalt recalls. "I wanted to be able to move an audience in the same way. I wanted to do something that had an impact on people." One of five children, DeWalt grew up active in sports music and student politics and says he inherited his energy from his parents Rob King who knew DeWalt at Regina's Luther College High School recalls him as a consummate organizer. "If we were going on a skiing trip it was Kevin who would not only make all the arrangements but manage to get sponsorship from Molson's. He's always been a true entrepreneur," King recalls. Originally, DeWalt wanted to be a forest ranger; he applied to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, but his marks weren't high enough so he auditioned his way into the University of Regina's music program where he studied voice, piano and conducting.

The summer before his final year, DeWalt went to Australia for wheat was to be a four-month working holiday but turned into a three-year odyssey around the world. "I didn't feel I could write about the incredible experiences I was having DeWalt recalls," but I knew I had to record them somehow," He decided to try film, and with Guy Anderson, a friend who joined him in New Zealand, worked in coal mines to raise enough money to buy second-hand equipment. The pair spent the next two years travelling. The trip was completely unstructured. "We would find something interesting and flip a coin," DeWalt says. "The loser would participate, and the winner would film the experience."

They dressed like locals, smuggled cameras and film across borders' and almost made it into Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion.

When they returned, flat broke, to Regina, DeWalt worked as a waiter and approached potential sponsors for the money he need to put the film together. "I remember going to a meeting with this guy at an insurance company," DeWalt says, "who laughed and said, 'amazing story, but if you go buy a suit and cut your hair, you'll get further, faster.'" In the end, he raised $150,000 from the University of Regina, Luther College, the CBC and the NFB and with assistance from others in the local, embryonic film industry -- including Larry Bauman of Camera West and Don List of Birdsong -- he produced a 90-minute multi-media show Namaste, that used seven projectors (six slide and one film) throwing images onto three screens. 'It was a glorified travelogue, with an arc," DeWalt says. "The show toured for 18 months -- I did the promotions, set up and ran the equipment, sold the tickets and drove the truck to the next gig. It taught me patience: from the time I left home, to my last show, six years of my life had been consu med." Namaste led to a job at a local company where he directed his first corporate video in 1985 DeWalt hired Ken Krawczyk, who was a partner in Videotrends, a Moose Jaw company, to run the camera. In February 1986, DeWalt bought out Krawczyk's partner for $22,000, and Minds Eye was formed. Krawczyk, currently pursuing a career as a director of photography, is still a shareholder.

Minds Eye faced a number of early challenges. "At the time, nobody was doing corporate, industrial, training or advertising work in Saskatchewan," DeWalt recalls. "We had to work for out-of-province clients -- our first big project was a CF-18 training film for the Department of National Defence - before we could convince the provincial government to take us seriously." There was little money. Do Walt and Krawczyk did everything, from answering the telephone to cleaning the floors. DeWalt's parents remortgaged their house to provide a line of credit that kept the company going. "I borrowed against the line of credit and paid it back half a dozen times during the late 1980s and early 1990s," he says. King, who joined Minds Eye as a partner in 1989, recalls how the partners used their credit cards to generate cash in lean times. "Still," he continued, "Kevin would give away film to young filmmakers trying to get their start."