Bringing the Bellmont Partners Video Series to Life

Pic­ture this. Pre­car­i­ous­ly perched on a plat­form on Cloud City, Luke Sky­walk­er braces him­self, kneel­ing and aim­ing his blaster pis­tol at an enraged Darth Vad­er. Back and forth, the neme­ses duel! Sky­walk­er uses care­ful­ly aimed bursts from his gun while Vad­er har­ness­es telekine­sis to blast Sky­walk­er from the ele­vat­ed bat­tle ground. After an extend­ed series of vio­lent bursts and force­ful lunges, Skywalker’s adept com­bat skills ren­der him vic­to­ri­ous over Vad­er, the supreme Com­man­der under the Galac­tic Empire. Sky­walk­er defeats his ene­my, his father, once and for all.

But the set­ting is a dif­fer­ent kind of Cloud City. It’s St. Cloud, Min­neso­ta. And the plat­form is real­ly the roof on a house in a cul-de-sac on Michael Court. And Luke Sky­walk­er is hold­ing a bat­tery-pow­ered laser-sound gun while Darth Vad­er wears an old black rain pon­cho. And these “Star Wars” char­ac­ters aren’t father and son, they’re broth­ers. And it’s not George Lucas behind the cam­era. It’s Bri­an Bellmont.

The year was 1981 and Bri­an, Dave and Mike Bell­mont put their cre­ativ­i­ty and cama­raderie to work in their very own sci­ence fic­tion Super 8 movie. Using edit­ing tricks Bri­an had learned in a film class that sum­mer, the broth­ers cre­at­ed their own spe­cial effects. With cal­cu­lat­ed cut­ting and tap­ing, they craft­ed their char­ac­ters to have super-human abil­i­ties like being able to jump onto roofs or dis­ap­pear with the snap of a fin­ger. Anoth­er trick cre­at­ed the illu­sion of laser beams. By tak­ing a pin and strate­gi­cal­ly scratch­ing care­ful­ly placed lines onto the film, the Bell­mont broth­ers made the dis­tressed emul­sion appear to be beams of light shoot­ing from eyes, hands, and bat­tery-pow­ered laser-sound guns! I mean blaster pistols.

And this was just the beginning.

Fast for­ward to 2023. Bri­an and Dave Bell­mont are the respec­tive own­ers of Bell­mont Part­ners Pub­lic Rela­tions and Kinos­tadt Films, two com­pa­nies deft­ly root­ed in video pro­duc­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Bri­an and Dave have each become local indus­try lead­ers, joint­ly and con­tin­u­ous­ly hon­ing their pro­fes­sion­al video pro­duc­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions craft since bor­row­ing their dad’s cam­era in those Super 8 film days, imag­in­ing projects and bring­ing them to life. Their com­bined decades of expe­ri­ence, wealth of indus­try knowl­edge, care­ful atten­tion to detail and pas­sion for sto­ry­telling make them a high­ly prac­ticed, dynam­ic team. Bri­an and Dave fre­quent­ly and skill­ful­ly col­lab­o­rate on projects for a wide vari­ety of clients and audiences.

Recent­ly, they came togeth­er again for a very spe­cial project that start­ed sev­er­al years ago.

In August of 2021, Bell­mont Part­ners cel­e­brat­ed its 25^th anniver­sary as an orga­ni­za­tion. But the Bell­mont team, deal­ing, along with every­one, with the com­pli­ca­tions, stres­sors, com­plex­i­ties and dis­tance of the pan­dem­ic, did not get to cel­e­brate their remark­able mile­stone. With heads down and a deep focus on clients and each oth­er, Bell­mont Part­ners con­tin­ued shar­ing their pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly adapt­ing to new needs and a land­scape of shift­ing targets.

In late 2022, when Bri­an and the Bell­mont team final­ly had the chance to pause and reflect on the past two years, includ­ing the fact that we’d flown past a huge mile­stone, he saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty for intro­spec­tion. He remem­bered think­ing, “This is a per­fect time to com­mu­ni­cate why we do what we do, where we’ve come from, where we’re going.” As an orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates by telling oth­er peo­ples’ sto­ries, he want­ed to take a moment to use our team mem­bers’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills to tell a new sto­ry: our own. And so, Bri­an com­mit­ted to shar­ing Bell­mont Part­ners’ sto­ry in hon­or of our 25^th anniversary.

He knew just the per­son to bring this project to life: his broth­er and life-long video pro­duc­tion part­ner, Dave Bellmont.

Dave start­ed his video pro­duc­tion career in and after col­lege, work­ing on projects like “Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000” and “D3: The Mighty Ducks.” He is a firm believ­er in the pow­er of video not only as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but as a tool for shar­ing authen­tic sto­ry­telling in a way the writ­ten word could fall short.

“Out of all the com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods, video can be very pow­er­ful because it can con­vey infor­ma­tion and emo­tion very quick­ly and effi­cient­ly,” said Dave. “It’s cap­tur­ing authen­tic moments. And audi­ences want to see video. They want to ingest video. They’re open to it and it’s part of their every­day experience.”

Dave also shared some of the many ways in which a com­pa­ny or orga­ni­za­tion can use video. “A video doesn’t have to accom­plish every­thing,” Dave shared. “It can just be one ele­ment of a larg­er mes­sage. And maybe that’s why peo­ple have his­tor­i­cal­ly been sort of intim­i­dat­ed by video because they think it’s a big deal, that it has to cov­er every­thing. But it doesn’t. It can just be one part of it.”

“We took the approach that we take with our clients,” said Bri­an, dis­cussing the process behind mak­ing the video series with Dave. “We start­ed with a strat­e­gy, a con­cept. Why are we doing this? What do we want to get across? And in our case, we want­ed to com­mu­ni­cate, using video, who our peo­ple are and why we do what we do. The end result is a real­ly good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Bell­mont Part­ners. It starts and ends with our people.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, Dave shared, “With any sort of doc­u­men­tary struc­ture video, I like to let the inter­views cre­ate the struc­ture and then sup­port it with B‑roll and pho­tos and things like that. So, it kind of edit­ed itself based on the interviews.”

Over the course of their 42 years col­lab­o­rat­ing on films and videos, Bri­an and Dave have watched video and more specif­i­cal­ly, cor­po­rate use of video, trans­form through­out their lives.

Bri­an rem­i­nisced, say­ing, “30 years ago, you hired a crew to make a cor­po­rate video for thou­sands and thou­sands of dol­lars. And you need­ed months to do it.  Sure, that kind of pro­duc­tion still hap­pens, but you can also empow­er your employ­ees to take their phone and shoot an inter­view in the hall­way, and that may be even more effec­tive than a for­mal video. If there are peo­ple in the video com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a way that is authen­tic and that is inter­est­ing, you’re already halfway there. When good peo­ple are telling good sto­ries, that gets you where you want to go.”

They share sup­port for this grass­roots, go-for-it approach to get­ting start­ed in using video as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions tool for some aspects of a busi­ness, but they also stress the impor­tance of know­ing when to bring in an indus­try pro­fes­sion­al. Work­ing with an expert, like Dave, allows for an expe­ri­ence in which qual­i­ty, con­cept, and impact are at the fore­front of a project. “The process of work­ing with Dave was seam­less,” Bri­an explained. “He’s not only a good direc­tor and video­g­ra­ph­er and edi­tor, but he is a good plan­ner and pro­duc­er. So, every­thing was ready to go, and our team mem­bers just need­ed to come in, talk for a lit­tle bit and then leave. It was a very pain­less process for them. And every­one we’ve showed these videos to real­ly just talk about how authen­tic and how “Bell­mont Part­ners” these videos are and that’s just what we were going for.”

“These videos” that Bri­an ref­er­ences are the final result of Bri­an and Dave’s col­lab­o­ra­tion. It’s the cul­mi­nat­ing project to cel­e­brate the 25+ years of Bell­mont Part­ners: the Bell­mont Part­ners Video Series.

The themes Bri­an envi­sioned and organ­ic respons­es the team gave trans­lat­ed into four authen­ti­cal­ly unique and dis­tinct videos:

1. The his­to­ry of Bell­mont Part­ners as an orga­ni­za­tion is cap­tured in Our His­to­ry
2. Show­cas­ing the extra­or­di­nary peo­ple that makes up Bell­mont as an agency inspired Our Cul­ture
3. High­light­ing the amaz­ing work we do, and have been doing, for clients for a more than a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry appears in Our Work
4. And the emer­gent, tran­scen­dent theme across them all was Our Com­mu­ni­ty (com­ing soon!)

The Bell­mont Part­ners Video Series not only show­cas­es who we are and what we do but has offered tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty for reflec­tion and grat­i­tude. We are so proud of what we do and enjoy shar­ing the sto­ries of the clients and peo­ple with whom we are for­tu­nate enough to work.

We hope you enjoy the Bell­mont Part­ners Video Series and their respec­tive blogs, all of which are acces­si­ble on our web­site and via the links below.

• Our His­to­ry Blog
• Our Work Blog
• Our Cul­ture Blog
• Our Com­mu­ni­ty Blog (com­ing soon!)

We’re thrilled about where we’ve been over the past 27 years, and we can’t wait for the next 27! Stay tuned for our 50^th anniver­sary, which may be com­ing to you live from a rooftop in St. Cloud …