“It exploded the first weekend,” he said.
“Fireplace for Your Home” launched nationally on Direct TV in December 2010. More than 30 fires later, Ford finally was happy with his final footage. His family became his best critics, telling him what looked stupid and when his camera angles were off. His wife, Lori, and three children thought he was “absolutely crazy,” said Ford, who reassured them it was the same idea as investing money, and that the payoff would come later. (He emphasized that he never used KLTV’s equipment for personal gain.) He hired professionals from Portland to film the fires but was never happy with the result, so he rented equipment - sometimes paying $2,000 a day - and shot it himself. He experimented with different types of wood. “I just kept learning and I said, you know what, I’m going to make it work.” Then you’d have to reclean it, readjust it,” he said. “You’d have to sit there for an hour and a half and let it burn out.
Some fires would burn from the left to the right, or worse, from the sides to the middle, creating an unsettling devil-horn effect.
But Ford quickly learned that shooting the perfect fire - one that burns hot but not too quickly, gives off the right amount of smoke and has a satisfying pop and sizzle - is extremely difficult. A split wood, Northwestern fire was in order, he decided. Three years ago he decided the original video shot in 1968 of the burning Yule log looked dated and could be improved upon.
That led to a series of other bird CDs, cage perches and seed guards, toys, and animal training DVDs that Ford’s company Pet Media Plus sold at Petcos and Petsmarts all over.įord, who served on the KLTV Board of Directors for six years, learned the video production side of things from local residents such as Gregg Campbell and Barry Verril. He started in 2001 with Feathered Phonics, a CD that trains parrots to talk. “People just email me all the time.”įord has been creating niche CDs and videos on the side for more than a decade. In another instance, representatives from a “major” water faucet company called to say they loved the video so much they wanted to order 150 DVDs for their executive team to enjoy in their homes. It’s that kind of feedback that makes the effort Ford puts into his videos worthwhile. Highly recommended if you don’t have a fireplace or if you just want to avoid all the work and cleanup involved in having a real fire.” I think it is the closest thing that we are ever going to be to having a real fireplace in our home. As it turned out, we both actually love it, it looks and sounds so real. One woman wrote in her online review: “My husband went online and saw this product and bought it for me as a joke. In the last couple of weeks, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Entertainment Weekly all ran blurbs lauding “Fireplace for Your Home” and its clever spoof.Ĭustomers love the fireplace video. The Netflix trailer was quirky enough to attract the attention of the media and bloggers. “It’s not too far from the truth of how crazy it was for me to film a fireplace,” Ford said Friday, calling the attention “pleasantly surprising.” Set to soaring, epic music, the campy trailer features footage of a roaring fire with a dramatic voiceover saying, “This winter, sparks will fly when a pile of wood meets its destiny.” Subtitles of viewer reviews flash on the screen: “I cried when the fire spread to the other log,” one said.Īt the end, a teaser appears for a parody “making of” video of the “Fireplace for Your Home Series” that shows a neurotic casting director (not Ford) searching for the perfect piece of wood. Then Netflix picked it up - and released an official trailer this month to promote it. (More on that later.) When he released the DVD in 2010, Direct TV made it available to its customers nationwide. The video has become a top seller on Amazon Prime and a popular pick on Netflix and Hulu.įord, 46, spent a year and a half and $35,000 filming the perfect fire. Talking Business: Longview man's fireplace video is all the rage | Localįor those who want a blazing fire at Christmas but don’t have a fireplace, Longview businessman George Ford has a solution that’s spreading like wildfire.įord, co-owner of Navigate Wireless, created an hourlong video of a merrily burning pile of wood in a fireplace.