The Window Channel welcomes you (at last) to our blog. If you are new to the Window Channel, we invite you to learn about the world of ambient scenic high-definition video. The Window Channel’s mission is two-fold. One, to capture in HD the ever-changing (and fast-disappearing) natural and man-made wonders of our planet. And second is to bring a little corner of silence and bliss to our ever-increasingly noise polluted space, we call home—whether that home is where you reside, a hotel, a hospital, or on-the-go.
Lots has been written about the search for silence, especially in the last thirty or so years. In his 1997 book, Quest For Silence, my father, Harry Wilmer, writes about how we have become a nation of “gap fillers”. He states, “People are deluged by radio and television. We awaken and go to sleep caught up in gossip, news of violence, and people acting funny interrupted by bursts of loud laughter.”
He continues to ponder the fate of silence, “We love what is rare and scarce like precious silences associated with naturally paced life. We look with awe and wonderment into the black night sky with the countless sparkling white points of stars. What happened to silence? Nothing happened to silence. It is always there, has always been, and always will be there. At any time … it is ready to become known the moment we stop filling the gaps that hide it.”
Many years after I read Quest For Silence, I was approached by a long-time friend and renown photographer, Mark Knight, with the idea of creating a television channel designed as an ambient escape from the noise and distractions of daily life. His idea reminded me of my father’s Quest For Silence, and inspired my quest for the source of quite and solace.
Mark recalled to me the scene from the movie Total Recall (1990) where Sharon Stone says to Arnold Schwarzenegger, “No wonder you’re having nightmares, you’re always watching the news” and she proceeds to turn a wall-size TV screen from the news to a bucolic nature scene. Thus was born the inspiration for The Window Channel.
Shortly thereafter Mark started to develop the unique formula that would be the aesthetic backbone for The Window Channel. Long-play, fixed-point-of-view, moving photographs of calming and engaging visual images—a metaphorical window to the world. The mission was harder to deploy than originally envisioned. Capturing moving images without camera moves, pans, pushes, pull-backs, etc. is extremely difficult, less the result is a still image on video tape. In addition, we set out to capture the naturally-occurring native sounds in Dolby® surround sound—especially difficult in most locations.
After countless hours of trial and error, the formula was perfected, and now we had the task to capture hundreds of hours of ambient, high-definition scenic video with stereo sound from all corners of the Planet. After five years of dedication and accumulation of thousands of airline frequent flier miles we launched Ventana our first programming suite to select hotels and forward-thinking medical facilities across the U.S. The Ventana series includes nearly twenty programs, with new titles added regularly, each carefully orchestrated in themes and tempos from blissful to upbeat.
Hotel guests, hospital patients and families, have embraced the relaxing and therapeutic qualities of the Ventana Suite programming. New hotels and hospitals are subscribing to Ventana every month. Additionally, select Ventana programs are broadcast, free-to-guests in 1.1 million hotel rooms in North America through The Hotel Network.
The Window Channel has amassed a loyal following of hotel guests and hospital visitors who have expressed the desire to be able to enjoy the unique and inspiring Window Channel programming in their own homes.
Let us know your thoughts and comments about The Window Channel.
