ATMOSFX podcast interview
CoolKay: Countyfairgrounds here do I have the Mister Michael Gills of ATOMFX. The director of Marketing and Communications on the line with me
Michael: yes you do
CoolKay: Hi Mister Mike! you’re in a really happy kind of a business do you want to tell me a little bit about AYMOSFX. and where they’re at and how long they’ve been in business
Michael: Sure absolutely! AtmosFX has been around since about two thousand and six it was founded by our two founders Pete Reichert and Pete Williams they met each other while working at M. T. V. together. They both worked in show production and some of the different animated shows including Beavis and Butt-Head and Freshman in a bunch of other shows. They discovered they had a mutual love of holiday decorating but especially for Halloween they had volunteered at local haunted houses and and created a really amazing hollowing displays for their homes and they started a business together. Where they first were into the production business what started doing high end animation for places like Universal Studios for the Seattle Mariners and especially they were focused on creating amazing special effects for Halloween.
Then they hit on the idea of making this really easy for people to do at home and thus ATMOSFX was born. At ATMOSFX we create these digital decorations, these are these custom animations of Halloween characters. We also do Christmas and Easter and then New Year’s where you project these projections onto the windows inside your house or on the walls outside your house and suddenly there’s – like – as in your living room or ghosts floating through the upper levels of your house or Santa Claus or the Easter bunny or fireworks or all the rest. And so it’s an amazing an easy way for people to have sort of Hollywood level specialist hacks in their homes as part of their decorating for their favorite holidays,
CoolKay: Well you know I’m going to ask you the first question as a lay person that’s going to come to my mind – and that’s –
Michael: sure
CoolKay: You know it – yeah – how hard things are to set up because not all of us are technology geniuses
Michael: They’re surprisingly easy to set up and we’ve made them specifically that way to do so so . First of all these digital decorations can be played on your television or on a computer monitor. So, if you just want to have some really beautiful animated stain glass playing in the background or little – goes floating through your television that’s the easiest way – second you can use a projector and if you don’t already have a projector we actually sell a kit that comes with everything you need to call the admins kit plus. It comes with a Viewsonic projector we love partnering with Viewsonic and they’re amazing projectors. It comes with the material that you would hang over your window and it comes with a variety of the digital decorations. You just hang its the easiest way to decorate as with like your window you hang some of the projection material over the window on the inside of your house you just set up the projector turn it on and project and suddenly there’s like I said there’s ghosts or witches were Zombis War where there are wolves. We have so many different decorations to choose from ranging from really family friendly all the way up to pretty scary depending on what you’re looking to do [00:03:25.960]
CoolKay: okay all right. So I I read somewhere on your site I think something about using like your iPhone for your phone’s first projection
Michael: So the the the files are fairly large so it’s certainly possible to download some of them onto your phone and the projector that comes in our kit the Viewsonic and one plus can be controlled by your phone There are also projectors that they make that actually come with your phone or they can connect into your phone so that’s another opportunity.
We think that because the files are fairly large you don’t want to necessarily fill your phone up with them but it is possible to to work off of a phone or off of a tablet plus some people like to just play the decorations on their phone or on a tablet and then they’ll insert that into a prop for example maybe you have a styrofoam tombstone that you put in your front yard is part of your hollowing decoration display and you might cut a small hole in it and put your phone in there and now if you’re playing R. E. re ice for example or some of our ghosts now you’ve got these little go Sir Yuri eyes and T. P. monsters appearing and moving inside of your props so it’s a way of even taking your existing Halloween decorations up to the next level
CoolKay:okay like I said not all of us are technology geniuses and I live online I can testify
Michael: We understand
CoolKay: It’s getting harder and harder every day by the way so I take it you have good customer support ? Because you know I mean just because someone buys one of your projectors and some stuff they might not know what to do with it. So you have go customer support?
Michael: We have amazing customer support we really do consider ourselves a business in the holiday decorating and one of the features of that is to have a one level customer support so if anyone ever has any questions even before they buy our products or after they buyer products they just need to email us at support at AtmosFX.com and we’ll be glad to help them and walking through any questions that they have
CoolKay: and you have new generations that come out every year don’t you?
Michael: We absolutely do. We’ve already released our first new Halloween decoration this year called Jack O. Lantern Jamboree Three. It’s the third in our Jack lantern Gymboree series and what’s really cool about these particular decorations is that we make it really easy for people to start playing with projection mapping, projection mapping sound Scerri and all that means is that you are projecting onto a surface and making that service come to life so in our case with Jack a lantern Gymboree Three. series you would have a little projector you actually project this onto the face of three pumpkins whether you have real ones are fake ones and certainly those pumpkins come to life and they sing songs and they tell stories and they make funny faces and they they tease to trick or treaters that come up your house So we released our first new one Jacqueline engine three. Three continues more stories including it has the legend of Sleepy Hollow if you’re familiar with that story being told by these pumpkins. Tt also has licensed hollowing hacks including – The Monster Mash, the Adams Family Team and Ghostbusters so you can have pumpkin singing the songs on your porch we also have other decorations coming out for Halloween some new ones coming out for Thanksgiving for Christmas. Much all year we’re just making new decorations trying to add more fun ways for you to have an amazing holiday celebration
CoolKay: so the sound comes out of your projector yes [00:07:24.920]
Michael: Many projectors many modern projectors do come with speakers all the projectors that we sell the M. one plus also has Bluetooth capabilities so you can connected to external Bluetooth speakers if you choose and they also have you know audio out jacks if you want to just run a wired line to wisteria world to the rest. But one thing I wanna make clear – the projector that we sell , we sell it just to make it easy for someone that wants to get started and buy everything in one package our decorations will work pretty much on any modern projector they’re they’re MP four files and those can play on like I said televisions computers phones tablets and most projectors
CoolKay: mmhm like I said I hope you have good customer service
Michael: We have amazing customer service and if you have any questions be glad to help you set up
CoolKay: Okay all right. I noticed that you know you’re giving away something free for new sign ups on your website
Michael: Absolutely if someone wants to check out digital decorating you know want to give it a try if you go on to our website there’s a little pop up that comes up with Gordy our little intern puppet mascot and sign up for our newsletter and you will get a free digital decoration you can try playing it like I said on your phone your tablet computer or T. V. If you have a projector you can try playing it on there to see what it looks like . We also have samples for – we run advertising for samples for Christmas and for our virtual background so there’s a lot of different ways that people want to try this stuff out. They can also just again email our support team at ATMOSFX com and if they say I’d like to try you know the – the Christmas sample or like try the virtual backgrounds and we be glad to help them out there as well. Just go to our website at ATMOSFXcom sign up you’ll get a free decoration and then from there if you decide that you want to move forward there’s all the information you need all the support that you need we’re here to help you look awesome
CoolKay: Okay so what do you think you’re most famous place that these things are have been used is
Michael: Our decker digital decorations are actually using a variety of businesses around the world our dinosaur decoration is in the Austrian dinosaur museum. Many of our decorations have been featured in a variety of aquariums around the world when they do their holiday celebrations our decorations of been featured in Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm, SeaWorld. They’ve been in movies and television shows If you’re familiar with this – the Creepshow TV show on A. M. C. this last season some of our decorations were featured in a couple of different episodes. So were kind of everywhere but yet – we’re still sort of up and coming and not everyone knows about digital decorating so if any of your fans want to give it a try they might be the first one in the neighborhood and draw all the people in because then they will have the coolest house in the neighborhood
CoolKay: Well I think Countyfairgrounds May get you some attention M
Michael: yes and we appreciate that
CoolKay: okay all right well I thoroughly enjoyed the interview
Michael: Thank you so much
CoolKay: sounds great thank you Michael
Michael: Thank you so much have a great day
CoolKay: Bye Bye
