Shelly Sulser

Executive Editor

“Why I play football?” teen athlete Keaunt’e Swarn says during the opening scene of the film trailer. “I’ve never been asked that before.”

Those who saw the mlive headline - “Grand Rapids Union snaps Michigan’s longest high school football losing streak” - may want to know more about how even a new foe, the pandemic coronavirus, couldn’t stop Union High School this year, of all years.

How it happened is revealed in the in depth film that St. Philip Catholic Central High School 2012 graduate Ned Ingalls is putting together in his first, full length, independent documentary that he intends to show to the world via streaming television next year.

“Right now, the working title is hashtag ‘union,’” said Hugh Ingalls, a 2010 St. Philip grad and Ned’s brother. “We’re going to try and get a distribution deal with Netflix, or Amazon or YouTube TV. There are so many streaming services now, Peacock, Hulu.”

Ned said the film is in post production right now as he gets background and theme music arranged among other tasks.

“That should take another year, in post production,” said ned.

Five to 10 years ago, said the Battle Creek native, filmmakers strived to distribute to cable channels and theaters but now, streaming is in bigger demand. 

“Union High School’s football team hadn’t won a game in five years and got their first win this year,” explained Executive Producer Hugh Ingalls. “They got a new coach, it’s an intercity school and got their first win this year. This is a group of young men facing COVID, racial injustice - it’s going to be a powerful piece.”

As kids growing up in Battle Creek, both Ned and Hugh, sons of Elle and Peter Ingalls, were active in sports, too.

“We played sports before we could walk,” said Hugh, a former member of the Battle Creek Boychoir, and, whose youth passion was hockey. 

Their younger brother, William, is a 2018 Lakeview High School graduate turned Columbia University student, videographer, screenwriter and director, and with a team of independently skilled associates, Ingalls Pictures has this year had to put some of its loftier ambitions on hold and respond to the demand for more commercial and even public service announcement type projects to help organizations who can no longer meet in person get their messages out to the world.

Just two weeks ago, the five-year-old firm released a public service announcement video for the Kent County Public Health Department urging people to stay home for the holidays.

They’ve recently completed commercials for Pier 1 Imports, Gallagher Uniform of Battle Creek, and Summit Point Roofing. They even film weddings and hype videos, they tout on their website, ingallspictures.com.

Last summer, they completed the recording of a virtual concert for an ensemble of the Brass Band of Battle Creek called Joyous Noise and on Nov. 21, the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra, housed at The Music Center where their father, Peter, was a founder of the Community Music School, released its second concert of the virtual season online.

In fact, both Ned and Hugh took piano lessons at the Community Music School. Hugh was in the Boychoir under the direction of Brooks Grantier from 2002 to 2004, he said.

The company began when Ned and Hugh were in college - Ned at Grand Valley State University and Hugh at Aquinas College.

“I had started the Aquinas hockey program and we brought him in to do some recruiting videos,” said Hugh of his brother, Ned. “It was our first entrepreneurial venture.”

In 2014, after Hugh graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sustainable business, he and his brother moved in together in Grand Rapids and began talking about how well they had done on that project.

“We started a conversation about what it would be like to duplicate that process,” recalled Hugh. “I go out and build relationships and promote cool videos and my brother and our team makes them. My brother is an incredible filmmaker. He even started in middle school, high school, making videos with friends, convincing teachers to do a short film as opposed to a book report.”

According to Ned, it was those experiences that really sparked a passion for filmmaking.

Although he wanted to leave to early projects in the past, he did confirm that he had some contact with AccessVision while in high school when he worked as in intern for the International Food Protection Training Institute (which has since moved from downtown Battle Creek to Portage.)

“I worked on a production for them that was broadcast on AccessVision,” said Ned.

Ned gets much of the credit from Hugh for the firm’s filmmaking expertise, though he was quick to explain that the entire team consists of skilled experts.

“We’re a team of entrepreneurs,” explained Hugh. “We have a unique business model where everyone essentially is running their own business.”

For example, Peter provides writing and marketing strategies. Elle is chair of the company’s advisory board. William is a camera operator, editor and screenwriter.

Denard Lenoir is a camera operator and editor. Michael King is a camera operator and FAA licensed drone pilot, Ben Cummings provides business development, Mishelle Quisena is a production assistant and Topher Gronek is a camera operator and editor.

“We’re looked at as a consulting business,” said Hugh. “My brother and I built the infrastructure that a freelancer can tap into. They can use our name as a marketing platform and we assign different team members depending on their expertise. It’s not a traditional model but it’s traditional in the sense of how a lot of ad agencies and creative companies operate, project after project.”

While they remain committed to their goal of movie-making, they continue to also try and meet local commercial demand.

“The direction we’re headed is major motion picture work,” said Hugh, “but right now, we’re doing predominantly commercial work, like the virtual concert for the symphony, which is kind of a COVID-19 related thing that happened. We had to look at when our commercial work came to a pause, what could we do? We had the skill set but never thought we’d be doing something like that. But with our skill sets, it’s something we were able to pull off and deliver something beautiful.”

Symphony conductor and Music Center Music Director Anne Harrigan has known Peter Ingalls for many years and had worked with Ingalls Pictures in the past for various projects.

“It was a natural fit,” said Harrigan of hiring Ingalls Pictures. “They do some beautiful work for us. In the past, they did a promo video for us and I love their approach to things. It was a lot of fun to work with them.”

Music Center Director Susan Balbaugh agreed.

“They are so nice to work with,” she said.

Harrigan approached Ingalls Pictures last summer to help with an online feature called “From Our Hearts to Your Home”.

“We put together I think 20 recordings of past performances and put them on free for musicians on our website and YouTube and Ingalls Pictures produced five of them,” said Harrigan. “It was helpful to see what they did with the Brass Band because it gave some perspective, ‘okay, here are some of the opportunities.”

Harrigan said she had seen their other work over time, too.

“With their Battle Creek connections,” she said, “it was a natural fit.”

Balbaugh added that the Music Center was one of their first customers five years ago.

“We hired them to do a promotion video for us and it was just gorgeous,” she said.

Hugh said the firm is now also considering making a Kickstarter video and video campaigns for small to medium sized businesses.

“Like for employee morale, culture building, obtaining customers,” he said. “We kind of fell into the role of marketing consultants that create video.”

The pandemic, in turn, has actually proven profitable for the firm.

“We could actually grow this year which is huge in times like this,” said Hugh, “so I think the demand overall is going up for video, as people go virtual.”