Larry Brill - Writer, Video Producer

A 25 year veteran of television news, and ten years after going over to what the TV folks call “the dark side”, meaning public and media relations, Larry Brill is the owner and creative director of a successful video production company in Austin, Texas. Brill Media serves a wide variety of clients from small non-profit organizations to large corporations.

Born and raised in California’s Silicon Valley before anyone had ever heard of silicon, and when apricot orchards outnumbered BMW dealerships, Larry stayed close to home and earned his degree in Journalism at San Jose State University. Three months after graduation he was hired as television news anchor and reporter in a town so small, it’s population was only half the number of students you’d find on campus any given day at SJSU. But it was a start. And it launched a career that has brought Larry full circle because of the way technology has miniaturized, revolutionized and democratized video production in this day and age.

You see, his first job at KOTI-TV in the thriving metropolis of Klamath Falls, Oregon was the kind where Larry would come up with the day’s story ideas, research, schedule, shoot video while simultaneously conducting interviews, write the script, edit the video and go on the six o’clock news and deliver it. It was turnkey video production before that phrase “turnkey” became popular. Today, some of his clients have a budget for Larry to hire photographers, editors and web or DVD production artists. But many others are small business owners and charities. For those, Larry is once again using the skills of doing it all, from creative concepts to editing and delivery. And it is more fun than ever.

Like so many creative types in the vast field of communications, Larry has that next Great American Novel in his head and his heart. He may resort to having it surgically removed someday. He is working on a new novel after a flirtation with New York publishing houses, coming excruciatingly close to having them accept the last manuscript he submitted.

For now, Larry will have to be content to live in infamy. He once held the title of the “Worst Writer in America” after winning the Bulwar-Lytton Fiction Award. It’s more affectionately known as the Dark-and-Stormy-Night contest, a tongue in cheek competition that draws about ten thousand entries from around the world each year as writers attempt to come up with the worst possible opening sentence to an imaginary
novel. His sentence:

As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45 after pumping six slugs into that bloodless tyrant who had mocked him day after day and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at his computer terminal, lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information highway.