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As You Like It was recently featured in the March 2008 edition of Sounding Board; a publication showcasing Vancouver Board of Trade members and their Spirit of Enterprise.

Article by: Anna Grimes

"We always said that if we did well at what we do, we would give back to the community in some way", says Sheila Allan, art director and principle at North Vancouver-based video production company, As You Like It Productions (AYLI).

That being the case, then business must be excellent for Allan and her business partner and husband Scott Alpen. The pair are endeavouring to complete production on a video documentary project that will help underprivileged people in Brazil's poorest neighbourhoods. The project details the work of two non-governmental organizations who work in Canada and Brazil. The first is the Canada Brazil Cultural Centre, a non-profit society that promotes cultural exchange between the two countries, and the second is the Olinda Children's Foundation, which was founded in 1991 to give children living in the favelas (slums) positive alternatives, and to help provide more promising futures through a caring and loving place for the children to learn.

To date, this project has taken Allan to the streets of Cidade de Deus, a favela in Rio de Janeiro that was immortalized in the Academy Award-nominated film, City of God, where she met and interviewed City of God lead actor Leandro Firmino.

All of this, of course, is in addition to their "day jobs, which, by all accounts, are incredibly busy".

Allan and Alpen both come from television broadcasting backgrounds and joined forces at AYLI in 2000.

Currently all the work done by AYLI is in media and DVD production. Principle areas are corporate marketing, product and brand promotion, corporate culture and training programs. Some of their largest clients are the RCMP and St. John Ambulance, who have contracted AYLI to produce their training videos.

This is some of the most rewarding work, Alpen says. "It's nice to know that the work you're doing is something that's going to help in the long term, that you're not here today and gone tomorrow."

The company has also shot and produced a short promotional piece for The Vancouver Board of Trade's Women's Leadership Circle as well as all of Rocky Mountaineer Vacations promotional and marketing materials including a 30-second ad that aired in Trafalgar Square in London.

Prior to working with Alpen and Allan, Rocky Mountaineer had no stock footage of their products or their routes. This is a service that AYLI is happy to offer its clients.

"We look at it as media resource management", Alpen says. "What we do is we develop a stock of footage that the company owns. A lot of other places will only deliver an end product, but we like to look farther down the road than that. We encourage companies to think long term, and think about developing a stock of footage for future projects."

Technology is always changing, which makes it tough at times for small businesses to adapt. But AYLI continues to stay on top with state-of-the-art high-definition video cameras and digital editing software. And as more people use video to share their stories, it has become one of those "must haves" for businesses.