Banking on KC – Shane Seley & Ed Leydecker of Wide Awake Films
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode are Shane Seley and Ed Leydecker, partners and producers at Wide Awake Films. It produces award-winning documentary films, museum interactives, virtual reality, and video for museums and history focused organizations, and it's one of the largest video production facilities still standing in Kansas City. The company's also received several tele and regional Emmy Awards. Let's talk about your story. You produce documentaries, as I mentioned, ads, corporate videos for a long list of very well-known companies like Sprint, John Deere, Kauffman Foundation, but your own story is pretty interesting too. So tell us about how Wide Awake Films came to be. Shane, you're the founder, so let's start with you.
Shane Seley:
Ed and I worked together in the '90s at a big production company and kind of met, became friends, and I had wild hair to go really triple down on history, which I'd been into since the third grade and had kind of found a niche and taken my video chops. I call it combining geekdoms, video geekness with my history geekness, and wanted to start a company and didn't know at all what I was doing. This is in 1999. Went out, did it for a while, my wife got pregnant and ended up taking a job in Denver for a while. After 9/11, moved back and I moved into an old house in Liberty and just started running the company there. And then Ed had at the time gotten free and I said, "Hey, you want to be a partner in this video production business that we're going to start?"
And so we started at the company for the most part in my attic in Liberty, though I did have an edit suite in my basement in Denver, so I brought that to the table. Ed came in and helped get some production gear and we just started doing what we did best. We love making films and videos for great organizations and we've always had a great time doing it. And 2002, we get to the River Market, we end up getting our own space and we literally have been on Delaware Street in the River Market since 2002, so almost 22 years.
Kelly Scanlon:
A lot of changes down there that you've seen. Yeah. Where did the name Wide Awake Films come from?
Shane Seley:
The Wide Awakes were the party that helped get Abraham Lincoln elected in 1860.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay, makes perfect sense.
Shane Seley:
It was like a youth viral movement that literally began in February of 1860 and propelled him to the White House in November of that same year. 800,000 Wide Awakes were marching at night with torches, all wanting to elect a president who wanted to stop the expansion of slavery in the United States. So that's where we got it.
Kelly Scanlon:
So Ed, what's your role at Wide Awake Films?
Ed Leydecker:
I'm a producer. Shane and I just saw a need at that point that when he came back into Kansas City and asked me to join him, we really didn't know where we were going to go with this business at that point, but we also felt the need that we needed to make money to survive on. So we started doing work for small corporations, businesses around Kansas City, that it was more of a corporate focus, but our ultimate goal was always history. We were doing work for Black & Veatch and we were doing work for the Kauffman Foundation. And Sprint, we did a tremendous amount of work with them in the early days, and it was always doing high quality work for clients. It was more than just being a couple of guys with a camera. It was two guys that came in that were very passionate about the clients that worked with us, and we always understood what their focus was.
And so we made them training films, pieces, informational videos on programs that they had within their organization, and it's just expanded from there. And when we produced Bad Blood with a... Co-produced with Kansas City Public Television here in Kansas City, that was a great high point for us working with Angie and Pam over at KCPT. And it just opened up our whole thought process about how powerful historical documentaries can be in educating the youth in this country. We just felt there was a lack in excitement with these history pieces. They were always like dates and names, and that's all you remembered.
Kelly Scanlon:
Let's fast-forward to July 2022. Wide Awake Films, you're facing significant challenges. Some of the union video work is drying up. You've completed some major projects, kind of at a crossroads. I mean, how did you navigate those challenges to maintain your company's momentum and your vision?
Shane Seley:
We had just built up a really good rep in town doing a lot of work. John Deere's a big client of ours, still is. Real proud of the work that we do for them. And we'd also gotten into doing a lot of work for some unions and really showing just the good work that working class union folks do across the United States. But that kind of started to dry up, and we had some big museum projects. We'd always had a few of those going. And everything kind of ended. And we'd also just done a television documentary series for Curiosity Stream, a big factual documentary streamer, and we kind of looked up from all this work and went, "We don't have anything really coming in right now. What can we do?" And so we just planned, started as a team, got together, laid out the challenges that we have.
We have really been fortunate to have an amazing team of people. We have people that have worked for us over 12 years still at our company of 14. And those people, we all got everyone together and said, "Hey, we need to kind of triple down on this history," because that's... What we're seeing in this production business, those niches can sustain you and we're really, really good at that. And there's not a lot of learning curve with our production team to come into these projects, and we just kind of realized that we can do this. So then we went and we hired our favorite client who just happened to come free and said, "Hey, can you help us package our content and market us the way we need to be marketed?" And so he came in and it's just been a whirlwind for us, but we really realized that we weren't that great at marketing ourselves.
We've kind of pivoted in that direction and it's just really paying off well. The clients that we have before us, the projects that we have before us, it came together. Honestly, probably in my 24 years of being self-employed, I've written a thousand business plans and marketing strategies. And this kind of worked, just what we did as a team really is starting to pay off and we see a way through this. And it kind of allowed our content to be seen by the people that need to see it and say, "You guys are pretty good at what you do," and start to get those kind of opportunities. So the amount of stuff that we have going on right now is really cool. Everything from Lexington, Concord, the first shots of the American Revolution to a show for PBS about a civil war archeological hunt for a mass grave. So it's just a variety of things.
Kelly Scanlon:
Let's talk about a really important project that you're working on now and that's the National Museum of the US Army, the 250th project. What a huge project. What's it mean for Wide Awake Films to be contributing to an exhibit like that? And just in general, how do you approach creating content to tell our nation's history?
Shane Seley:
Well, this project is interesting in that it's one of a few that we have teed up to help celebrate and educate Americans about the Sesqua, semi-quincentennial celebration of America, America's 250th birthday, so to speak, which begins in spring of 2026. It's coming right up. And if you remember 1976...
Kelly Scanlon:
I sure do. Yeah, I do.
Shane Seley:
Yeah, everyone remembers that, right? It helped get me into a lot of it, of history, and I'm excited that we have that before us. But our project for the Army is working with some... We're a subcontractor on it with some other big exhibit fabricators, but it's a museum outside of DC just down the road from another of our clients, Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate, who we've done 12 projects for. This project in particular deals with American soldiers and civilians who helped support the war effort that led to our independence, and it will be housed in the Army Museum there. But there's a lot of thought that goes into it. These projects aren't one and done. They're going to be there. This one's a temporary exhibit, but most of our museum work can be there 30 years, we're looking. So there's really that kind of thought that goes into it.
You don't want to make it too trendy, contemporary, if you will. We have to think about clothing if we have modern shots and things. So there's just a real thoughtful approach and it's a big group effort, and those projects are deliberate slowly, execute promptly. But we're excited. We have one of the largest collections of American Revolution recreated stock footage on the planet right now, really relevant, 4K, 6K, 8K material that can be projected on large spaces and in various media environments. So these museums aren't just looking at a kiosk. We'll have video projected on a 30-foot screen that's meant to give you a sense of what Valley Forge was like.
Ed Leydecker:
Our film at Mount Vernon, it snows on you. The sound effects are your seats rumble and pull you out of the seat and the room fills with smoke when you're in battle scenes, it encompasses the entire theater. It was written up in the New York Times as being one of the best types of film to help educate, especially young kids. They are involved in that. And we've gotten a lot of praises off of that film. That was actually one of our largest productions that we'd had up to that point. And that's what really pulled us into this whole bigger world of the history education that we think is so important today.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah. And now you're collaborating with Ken Burns. You're talking to his team on a regular basis. How has that collaboration influenced Wide Awake and what do you see as its impact on your future?
Shane Seley:
Well, we'll see. Ken's company, Florentine Films, is doing 12 hours on the American Revolution coming up in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of the United States. And having this large repository of footage, it was like all roads led back to Wide Awake. They were seeing our stuff, going, "Who did that? Who did that?" So they called and said, "Can we license footage?" And at the time I almost dropped off my chair. Come from the world of Civil War reenacting, and that's kind of my tribe, if you will. It was kind of my gateway into a lot of this. And a lot of us that used to reenact in the '90s now run companies or museum sites and various media outlets that do this kind of thing. And at the time he said... Ken had always said, "Reenactors are tubby bearded old guys, and I'm not going to use them in my shows."
And it kind of inspired me to go, "I'm going to prove you wrong." And ever since that, our specialty is live action combat recreations. That's what we do. And we've kind of made a name for ourselves doing it. When I heard having done Revolutionary War content, there's no archive at the Library of Congress, there's no photography, there's very little things you can use to visualize that era. And I said, "It's going to break him, and he's going to need footage." And they called and they do. So we'll see. So far we're just kind of doing some stock footage with him, but I do see us collaborating on some shoots possibly with them, and that's exciting. They're the name of the game in documentary filmmaking.
Kelly Scanlon:
I'm curious about your approach to storytelling. So you tell a story in various genres and various domains. What is your approach... Is there... To storytelling, I guess is what I'm getting at. How do you keep it engaging, and as you mentioned, Ed, educational?
Shane Seley:
Keep in mind that we're competing with everything you're seeing on your phone and everything you're watching on any screen you have. If our stuff can't compete and keep you as engaged as that no matter the budget, then we should give it up because people are just exposed to too much video these days to expect them to watch something that isn't going to captivate them. So that's it.
And a lot of times we just rely on traditional storytelling techniques and tension and drama and things that people kind of expect. And we are fortunate to have some amazing storytellers in our midst, our editing team, some of our writers, our researchers, and it's just story, story, story with us. We realized about eight years ago that we had to make that real pivot, and to stay relevant, it had to be you've got to tell a compelling story and it's got to be compelling on paper. And then the first thing we do is we record that, what we've written, and we turn it into a radio edit, just like what we're doing here. And if we listen to it back, if it's not compelling just to listen to with no visuals, then maybe we need to go back to the drawing board.
Kelly Scanlon:
You have a project that's called the Lexington Concord VR 360, and it is aimed at educating students and adults about historical events. How do you see Wide Awake Films contributing to more educational content, and what impact do you hope to make by bringing this history to life and truly educating Americans about our past?
Ed Leydecker:
I think a lot of it has been developed with our relationship with Garry Adelman, who was with the Civil War Trust and now the American Battlefield Trust, and his enthusiasm. He's the historian for their organization, and bringing him out in the field with his knowledge and everything. And Shane and all the guys in the office came up with these step ins, which basically you take the original photograph that came from that battle and he can step into it, which is just amazing. And we've had great success, and it's really grasping people, and it's made his presentation so much more powerful. So it's really fun, especially when you go to a battlefield with Garry, everybody knows him, anybody that's into the history, and they all congregate around our shoots and they want to see what we're doing. And he's turned into quite a historian, a celebrity as well in the world, that these kids that need that kind of stimulation, for him to step into these photographs is an amazing thing that we've really been perfecting here over the last year now.
And they're only getting better, each and every one of them. And we have this amazing team, our editing staff and what they can do. The technology is pretty superior, so we just hope it's going to be a way that school teachers have a place that they can go to. A lot of college professors, a lot of people look at our information because it's historically accurate. Everything we do is documented. And I think it's an easy way for a school teacher to pull it into their classroom and see what we see out on the battlefields with these young kids. They love this stuff, and we're just doing it in a way that's exciting again.
Shane Seley:
We're using virtual reality and there's a lot of new goggles coming out. They're using augmented reality where you pull your phone up on a battlefield or historic site and you see characters that pop up. We did a project with them called the Civil War 360 VR, look for it on YouTube. It has 35 million views. I mean, that's major leagues, and we don't know how it happened, and they don't either. But most of the stuff that we've done for the American Battlefield Trust YouTube page has almost 55 million views, and with that one being the big one, so we're doing something right in collaboration with them. And I think keeping that techie side to that and the YouTube side to that is important. In the 1976, I got into the Revolutionary War and I went to the library and I checked out a book and I read it, and I kind of got into that. Well, nowadays, that isn't the path. That content needs to be on their devices, and that's how we can get people interested in this stuff.
Kelly Scanlon:
You have to meet people where they are.
Shane Seley:
Absolutely.
Kelly Scanlon:
How do you balance your commercial success with philanthropic efforts?
Ed Leydecker:
I think it's a lot of just our thought process in the way that we run Wide Awake. And I mean, a perfect example, I think of that, in doing things less expensive than what we normally do is the Phoenix Foundation. And you look at that organization, we've done their films, I think, for three years for their big convention every year, and we see the things that they do in the community. And Shane and I have always believed a strong community is one that's well-balanced. I think that as business owners, we need to contribute, and every business owner in this town that benefits off of this community, they need to find a way to give back. And I know a lot of them do, a lot of it, but we feel good after we do something like that and we find out how much money they raised at an event that night, and it makes our hearts really happy about the work that they do as well.
And we've been doing this... Like a lot of times, we'll get small Civil War sites that don't have any money, and we'll let them have access to our library. We just finished a piece for Wilson's Creek National Battlefield down in Springfield, and it's so enjoyable to walk into that after we have completed the installation and everything that we did for them. And we went down there on their ribbon cutting when they opened their new visitor center. And just to look around to see school teachers come up to you, "Hey, thanks for the work you guys do," and the kids that are there, it's exciting, and it makes you feel like it's a healthy community that everybody, we all care about these things. And that's a lot of the reasons we do the work with the Medal of Honor Society, men and women that have given their lives to our freedom in this country.
And I think it makes people think about when you go to war, you need to realize there are things that you pay forever on the back end of it. And when we've had the opportunity to meet the types of people we have, when you sit on those film shoots, sitting in the middle of Gettysburg and having a gentleman talk about the way that he received the Medal of Honor, how much it relates directly, whether it was the Vietnam War or World War II, relates to those soldiers and those civil war battles as well. They feel a lot of the same emotions and they care about our country. And I just hope we can spread that so that everybody realizes what we have here in our great country.
Kelly Scanlon:
Let's talk a little bit about your contributions to Kansas City's creative scene. When I introduced you, I mentioned that you're one of the few production facilities of your size that is still in Kansas City. How do you see Wide Awake Films contributing to the film industry here in Kansas City and shaping the local creative scene?
Shane Seley:
Well, two years ago, we did a big series for Curiosity Stream, a streaming platform, and shot most of it here in town. And it was a lot of live action recreations. It's almost like shooting movies. So we shot about 25 days here in town, and really, we had a lot of interns and we used a lot of seasoned crew as well. And now I see all those PAs and interns that we helped get their chops, they're out in the film community right now. We haven't had a show for a while, but my goal is to bring it back to Kansas City. It's a great backdrop.
The crews here rock. I mean, there's just a different approach to things. I was on the phone with a woman from Seattle two weeks ago who's doing a presidential library, and she had hired a vendor here in Kansas City, and she said, "After talking to you, I want keep talking. There's something about you Kansas Citians that I'm not seeing on the East Coast. You're very relaxed. You have a good vibe. You don't seem like you're insincere, and you also seem very confident. And I don't know, it was just what she said was like checking the box for a lot of people.
Ed Leydecker:
And there's some incredibly talented people in this town, the freelancers, the people that work in our industry. And our current staff is amazing in the way that we all work together. We're all into the highest quality that we can produce informational wise to present it in a way that's effective and it gets results for our clients. And Kansas City's a great place. And I remember in the 1970s going down to the River Market and most of the businesses at that point, they were going through that transition that occurred down there, and a lot of the businesses were vacant.
And I always loved that area. And when Shane and I were working, he's living up in Liberty and I'm living up in Weston, so we always wanted to come to the Market, and so we moved down here. It just opened up our eyes and it has been a wonderful place to work out of, but we couldn't be any happier being from Kansas City and having great people around us, business people like Country Club Bank. And Linda Cole, she retired, but we have a feeling that she helped shape our company. She was pretty tough on us in the early days. It made us respect the dollar and don't go too crazy on your budgets. And now we're working with Dan Zinser. He's been awesome. And so we think it's a perfect location. Kansas City is great.
Kelly Scanlon:
What are Wide Awakes Films' ambitions? How do you plan to continue creating a better future for the city and making an impact outside of the area?
Shane Seley:
As we continue to get involved in these large-scale museum projects, that's something that... We love that. Be it history or not history, but we're really intrigued with using media in physical spaces. We're developing pioneering ways, so you send us the CAD of your museum and you have six screens in there, we're rebuilding that. And in VR goggles in our studio in town, we're walking through that space. We're the first people sometimes to be able to kind of set foot in that space. And that's just the stuff that we're doing out of necessity because we have to see it. But I see making that impact and really creating cool production jobs for people in this town and continuing to bring production back to Kansas City. I think that's a big part of what we're after and what we'd like to do, continue to take care of our staff and their families, and we are very much an employee-driven business.
We care about them, we always have, and we care about our rep. You ask anyone in the civil war, rev war, people that are into those communities around the United States, and we have a great rep. And that's just something Ed and I really care about. And we operate with a great business conscience and try to treat people like we'd want to be treated. And it's gotten us this far. We're not rich guys or anything, but we're doing all right and our team's doing all right and we're working on good stuff, and we want to keep it up, and I think the sky's the limit for where we can go. So we're really tooling to have more capacity and grow. We want to be a bigger company and provide some great opportunities for people.
Kelly Scanlon:
Shane, Ed, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your history and helping us understand a little bit about how you're preserving our American history. It's just fascinating to listen to how you have taken your interests and made that into a business. So often, entrepreneurs have passions, and some are fortunate like you to turn those into thriving businesses. So thank you for coming and sharing your insights and the work that you do. We appreciate it.
Ed Leydecker:
Thank you, Kelly.
Shane Seley:
Thanks for having us.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Shane Seley and Ed Leydecker for being our guests on this episode of Banking on KC. Shane and Ed emphasize the significance of storytelling in making history engaging and accessible to a broader audience. Their dedication to combining high quality video production with historical accuracy aims to educate and inspire people about past events, ensuring these stories are not forgotten. This approach to historical education is vital for fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of our past, encouraging a more informed and thoughtful society. By leveraging modern storytelling techniques and technology, Wide Awake Films bridges the gap between historical events and contemporary audiences and issues. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.