Years ago, I had a video store. One April, the film Big Fish was released. I was super lucky to have several talented people working with me. One in fact, was and still is, an amazing artist. She offered her skills and painted window sized art for many of our promotions. This was the first window she painted and she did it on reverse! From that painting on she chose to paint on the outside taking the risk that hoodlums might destroy her work. They usually didnt!
Right inside of our front door at the store we had a showcase that we changed out with different themes. For Big Fish we filled the showcase with dafodils to mimick the dafodil field scene. When we took the display down my daughter and I took the flowers to the cemetery by our house and placed them on all of the super old graves.
Another fun film she painted for was Hellboy. Amazing detail, that you cannot even appreciate with that glare and reflection! Once again, we scoured the city for action figures for our showcase. We usually had a contest that folks could enter to win whatever we had in the showcase. Big hit for kids and adults as well.
Enter Van Helsing. Huge hit. Something about vampire movies that drive people to rent in droves. I found an awesome Van Helsing castle. We put it together and once again, rocked out our showcase. The person that won this about passed out they were so excited.
Welcome Lord of the Rings. Thank you, Peter Jackson. This film had an amazing run for us, and in turn, we had an amazing contest. Once again we filled the showcase with a ton of action figures and had a drawing. Check out that tree that Stacy drew on the glass below! Awesome! We also left Gollum on our front door for a very, very long time. People loved him!
We ordered and sold, so many cardboard stand up figures, it was unbelieveable! My daughter was in love with Legolas. After convincing her that Legolas was really Orlando Bloom, she’s now in love with him! We even took a cardboard stand up to the photo place at the Mall and had her picture taken with Legolas. My mom picked that dress up in a thrift store in Wales. How perfect is that?
We also had a good time with Shark Tale. We loaded the showcase with stuffed animals from the film and we did the same with Finding Nemo.
We had a good 12 year run with this video store. We were pretty much forced to close in September of 2005. There are days I miss the business and of course all of the people who helped make those 12 years possible. I was blessed with a wonderful group of employees!
But today, I am thankful that my days are filled with less film, in more ways than one.
In The Middle 