MTAV was on board right away helping provide the much-needed lighting and effects equipment to help John Ironside and his team at Five Points Media film a batch of very special videos for Candlelighters Simcoe, Parents of Children with Cancer who support the families of these heroic and mighty little warriors.

All pictures by Kelly O'Shea Morrison.

Learn more about the man behind Five Points Media, how he is having an incredibly positive impact on our community including his new plans to create a new project called "The City of Barrie Network".

Five Points Media:

Five Points Media is a not-profit-motivated social enterprise that exists to help our local community and the charities that call it home. We do not generally charge for our services for small projects, and our daily fees for larger or funded productions run at less than half of what the charity or not-for-profit group would pay if hiring a similarly experienced and equipped crew out of Toronto. It is a balancing act of the need to cover our bills while giving as much as we are able back to our community.

To best explain why I created Five Points Media, I turn to a quote of the Dalai Lama that can be found in ‘Visions of Compassion’, a collection of writing about Altruism, Ethics, and Compassion. “Basic human nature is compassionate. We humans have an innate, not learned, disposition toward affection, care, gentleness, and positive mental and emotional states.”
When I was a younger man you could not have convinced me of this truth. I worked as tech-support for the security industry, and I had recorded news in places where only those who had to travelled. Without realising it, I had submerged myself in the darker side of life, and my view on life was bleak and limited.

"Then I became a father":
My first child was healthy, bright, and physically unencumbered, and as such there was little if any motivation to change my views. I worked, provided for the family, and remained in my bubble of centrally focused reality. Then, when that marriage ended, and my wife moved away with our son, I drew deeper into the darkness.
I then met another woman who already had a daughter. The girl was very young, and she was experiencing undiagnosed medical issues that were eventually diagnosed as Cystic Fibrosis. Then, a couple of years later, we learned that her little brother, my second son, had Autism.
It is hard to explain to the parents of ‘normal’ children how so much of your life becomes consumed with the care of children who are special needs. I spent an hour every morning and night with our daughter working on breathing exercises and ensuring she took her pills, and one morning in January we were woken to the sound of the French door sliding open and I had to run out into the snow in bare feet and my shorts to stop our son from running onto a busy street. Through trips to doctor’s offices, hospitals, fundraisers, special camps, and other sources of shared experiences, my eyes were opened to the reality of the needs of others in a way that I could never have imagined was possible.
That relationship ended a few years ago, at which time I managed to return to my original trade of commercial video production through the creation of 3B Solutions.

Commercial Video Production
I had the equipment, so I thought it prudent to offer the donation of my services to charities. In a short time we became known as a company that cared and requests for our community services increased as our commercial business grew due to our newly-earned reputation. My crew and I then decided to create Five Points Media as a way to further provide to the community.
I will never get rich running a not-for-profit social enterprise, but I cannot describe the joy of knowing my crew and I have helped those in need who simply cannot afford to hire professional video production services to reach the community. My thoughts now are in line with the final scene of Schindler's List, when the thousands of decedents of the hundreds of people he saved pay homage to him. Each life is a ripple on a pond, intersecting with others, and causing changes in all they touch.
Through the nearly one hundred videos we have donated to charities and community groups, we have reached literally hundreds of thousands of local people and we have been credited with helping those benevolent groups to raise tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that is now flowing to help those in need.

City of Barrie Network:
We are now launching the City of Barrie Network to share with local businesses the success we have enjoyed through altruistic advertising. Through it, local businesses will benefit from reaching tens of thousands of nearby consumers through advertising on video projects about their community that are seen to be helping others. This regional network will allow our neighbourhood business to support and promote each other without cost, and to advertise their own business in the most powerful way possible for the lowest area rates in advertising.
Most business owners understand there is a need to help others. Doing so feeds their soul, and it also helps their business. Helping the community creates a bond with local consumers, and altruistic advertising gives the owner and their staff credit for their ultraistic and philanthropic donations to the community we all share. This form of self-promotion has been around for decades, but it is only recently, with the advancements of social media, that small businesses can work together to help their community and benefit from doing so.

For more information about the City of Barrie Network please call John Ironside at 705-828-5605 or contact by email at jironside@fivepointsmedia.ca.