Homestead Productions Grows Saint John Studio With No Borders
SAINT JOHN – For recording studio Homestead Productions, growth has been steady over the last two years.
The company’s married owners, Mike Emmerson and Mel Pitre began recording at home in 2015 to make demos of their band, The Southern Comfort Band.
In 2019, Emmerson’s friend and mentor Pete Beliveau further trained him in video, audio/visual and broadcast skills, which worked in his favor with the pandemic putting a pause on touring.
“Mike was like, ‘I’m not going to play online, on my phone for our fans – they’re going to get good quality or we’re not going to play at all,’” says Pitre. “That’s what pushed him to invest into equipment that was just enough for us to start off and broadcast live.”
She adds as they started working and recording from home, other people reached out to them for projects.
“It was really a stroke of perfect timing – we went from music to videos to commercials to voiceovers, all from local businesses, and then we started reaching out to international markets,” she said.
“Now we’re recording songs for people overseas and tracks for people in Canada, and it’s branched out to all kinds of amazing things.”
Homestead Productions’ services include the use of its recording studio, sound engineering, mixing, audio/visual projects, videos, demos, promotional materials, green screen and animation.
“We’ve upgraded from just being able to do this for ourselves to a full production where we can probably record a group of about 16 people, and we have the capacity to do anything from video to voice to animation,” she said.
Their projects include music recordings for local artists, a wedding song for an Arizona wedding that’s available on Spotify, a Zoom party in Los Angeles, and Pitre recording her voice for virtual Healthcare app, WellAssist.
“We’ve recorded a band that could not be together, but we did them all individually and we put them all in front of a green screen and it looks like they’re all playing together for a demo,” said Pitre.
They recently added live streaming on any location from music shows to weddings and live broadcasting across multiple platforms, (podcasts, live bands, individual musicians playing live online, lessons, instructional videos, seminars) to their repertoire.
Pitre and Emmerson also offer voice, bass, drums and guitar lessons.
Homestead Productions combines photography, videography, music production and video production into one service for clients. They offer a personal approach tailored to what clients need but add they’re also open to suggestions and collaboration.
Pitre says the studio’s mobility and smaller size are another advantage, adding it creates less overhead and helps give reasonable prices to clients.
“We love to work with other people like graphic designers, or if somebody needs to outsource, we outsource to local friends of ours in the same field,” she said.
Pitre adds their future plans include investing in more cinematography equipment for bigger upcoming projects and looking for a larger working space while continuing to grow their services.
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