‘Farmer’s mentality,’ generous spirit, can-do attitude propel producer Michael Breeding to success

By Kristy Robinson Horine
NKyTribune correspondent

Michael Breeding leans over to give his dogs a good rub down. He has just finished a six-hour editing session on his latest project and feels a good deal of satisfaction. Satisfaction with his work, with his life, with simply how he chooses to be.

Breeding is a commercial producer, and then, he is so much more. The owner and CEO of Michael Breeding Media, he has learned through the years to wear every hat, to push every story to its best telling and to give more than he receives payment for. Now, after 22 years in business as a producer, that generosity of spirit pays in huge dividends. Creativity seems to breed more creativity, and more creativity means a deep fulfillment in Breeding’s life.

After a few minutes, his blue eyes flash and a generous smile spreads slowly across his face. He sees it now – his next step – and the determined part of his nature takes over. He gives the dogs one last pat and moves back into work mode. It’s a mode that has long been seeded, tended and harvested. It’s a mode that permeates everything he holds dear, and it comes straight from the beginning of his own personal time.

Opening credits

Breeding spent much of his early years as the third son of a tenant farmer in Valley Hill, a small rural community near Springfield, Kentucky. He remembers the daily routine: Get up early, work, work, work.

“That’s how I was raised by both my mother and my father. They let no dust settle under their feet,” Breeding says. “We raised 150 dairy cows, 150 acres of tobacco and corn and hay.”

Along with a strong Protestant work ethic, came a “can do” attitude that was born out of tremendous support from his parents, Elwood and Elizabeth.

“I was set up for success from the beginning and they made sure of it. The support that I got that says you can do anything. My mother, she’s amazing,” Breeding says. “My father would leave the field in the middle of a sunny afternoon. I would come out there dressed in my band uniform, or my track uniform and he would get off the tractor and drive me twelve miles to school and tell my brothers to take over.”

He never knew he was poor, for the richness of his family life, yet every morning before school, he remembers going through the piggy banks to find lunch money. He waves his hand in the air at a memory, then speaks of years in band, Beta Club, 4-H and speech competitions.

“My parents made it happen, whatever I wanted,” Breeding says. “I had so much support from my family and so much sweet support from the community of Springfield. It’s a small town that really got behind their people and their kids.”

When Breeding was in his teens, a local antique dealer packed him up and drove him over an hour away to the University of Kentucky. He told Breeding to sing for them, and from that encounter, Breeding received a full scholarship.

A Springfield State Bank banker knew the family’s financial limitations, and assured his parents that every check Breeding wrote was covered, as long as he had everything he needed.

And just last year, Springfield hosted a premiere of one of his media creation, Kentucky Governor’s Mansion: A Century of Reflection, narrated by Diane Sawyer. In addition to the premiere, Breeding’s hometown, along with Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, awarded him the first ever Springfield Hometown Hero Award.

The former and present support, however, would be absent, were it not for the work Breeding pours into every project.

The work of the work

After high school, Breeding went on to study music at the University of Kentucky. He then left there and followed the pull of speech and theater at Asbury. His senior year, he followed another pull toward mass communications and finished his undergrad work at Eastern Kentucky University in 1981.

He spent 14 years at Shaker Village, working in various roles – as an interpretive singer, forming the Shaker Village Ensemble, eventually developing an in-house film department and, later, being promoted to development officer. Every position helped to develop more and more of the commercial producer deep inside him.

When he finally decided that the pull to start his own company was stronger than the pull of fear about starting his own company, he leaped ahead without looking back.

“I was scared to death. The first thing I did when I started my business was to have panic attacks every day,” his eyes sparkle and he laughs. It is a wide open sound that belies part sincerity, part typical Michael Breeding sense of humor.

He set a goal and reached it, to write 10 to 20 letters before 8:30 each morning. These letters, he addressed to CEOs, company presidents, marketing directors, anyone he thought he needed an introduction to. “I wrote them a letter of ‘by the way, I think you need me,’ planting these big seeds for documentaries or marketing films,” he says.

Breeding was selling himself, yes, but he was also selling the behind-every-scene work that a commercial producer does.

“In 1995, equipment was not cheap. When I went into business, you had better have a daddy who was throwing you a couple hundred thousand dollars, to half a million, and that doesn’t even include office space,” Breeding says, raising his eyebrows and nodding. “I started as a desktop producer, meaning I didn’t own any equipment and didn’t want any equipment. My philosophy was, let me do what I do best, and that is produce. A true producer doesn’t own equipment, necessarily. In the true sense of the word in Hollywood, the producer is in charge of the budget, so my role was to hire the right person for the job.”

Breeding works at several different forms, which include short marketing films that could last anywhere from 7 to 14 minutes, to full-length documentaries. He has a mixture of work that includes commissioned pieces by groups or businesses, and then pieces that he has an idea for, and then has to find the money to produce. While he doesn’t mind doing short-form work – anything that is under seven minutes – he prefers using long-form that better incorporates his expertise, the story-telling aspect of his work, and that certain something that only Michael Breeding brings to the production table. Many people say that certain something is a lack of fear, or a wealth of creativity. Breeding says it is just how he has learned to say yes.

“I have a farmer’s mentality. We get up early and we don’t go to bed until the work is done and we don’t say no very often. My answer is usually yes, I think we can do that,” he says. “I will say that sometimes, and regret that later. I say yes because I have this attitude of generosity or this attitude of hope. This attitude of ‘I can do it’. I say yes because I am grateful and I say yes because my name is on it and I say yes because, behind that obstacle, is a wonderful opportunity in most cases.”

Seizing all opportunities that come his way has led to hundreds of projects, at least nine of which are on a regular rotation at KET. Each long-form project takes at least thirteen months to complete: six months to figure out what to do, six months to do the research, and then several months to shoot and work on editing.

“I labor over my work. I’m cognizant of what is going to work, what is boring, where the wow factor needs to be. I am oftentimes not afraid to try new things,” he says. “The whole idea of testing and fixing and layering and fixing, I have this attitude now where it’s not really finished until it’s finished. I keep honing and crafting. I don’t mind the sliding backward because it just makes the project better.”

And making each project better makes his living better as well.

“Producing doesn’t make me complete, it’s just what I do for a living,” he says. “What makes me complete is the whole other side of me – my home life, the time I have to spend with the dogs, to fix dinner, to go visit my mother. That stuff makes me complete.”

When his next editing session is complete, Breeding takes the dogs for a walk. He waves to his neighbors who are always ready to lend a hand in whatever production he has. He flashes his electric blue eyes at the future, and smiles at the next yes that might come his way.

Kristy Robinson Horine is a freelance writer who lives in Paris.

Visit Michael Breeding’s website to view his videos.

See these NKyTribune related stories:
NKU’s debuts Dreamers and Doers film

PHOTOS AND MORE:

Over 50 photos to include former Governor Martha Layne Collins and women featured in the documentary can be downloaded at this link:

https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/938bbf98faf454236a570a278292d27220150608110521/74ea2e

Link to clip from Dreamers & Doers: https://vimeo.com/120418113

Link to Children’s Kentucky Governor’s Mansion Film: https://vimeo.com/96734722