Photographs contributed by Alderman Company
rooms, dens, bedrooms, kitchens, porches, garages (even a poker parlor) — cover a vast warehouselike complex and stand out like oases of beauty. The setting resembles a motion-picture sound stage, where make-believe looks real — or at least in an ad in a magazine or catalog. There are even tall director’s chairs, with “Alderman client” lettered on the back so clients can watch productions in progress. As in Hollywood, “Quiet on the set” is now being heard at Alderman more and more. For instance, last year Alderman videotaped a commercial for Winston-Salem-based Piedmont Federal Savings Bank that TV viewers saw during the holiday season. In collaboration with Piedmont, which has been in business since 1903, Alderman created a replica of the bank from the iconic Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. The commercial featured Piedmont President Rich Wagner coming out of an office into the bank’s lobby, just as Jimmy Stewart did in the movie in which he portrayed bank president George Bailey. The set was still in place the other day. The bank vault door looks as solid as the real thing, but it’s really a plywood prop covered with a sign for the Bailey Brothers bank. The set features period desks with old typewriters, phones and a Burroughs adding machine with a crank on the side of it. Pendergras says Alderman designers achieved such detail by “watching the movie a zillion times.” The Art & Soul of Greensboro
All aspects of the Piedmont project, starting with a concept meeting, were carried out at Alderman. Nothing was outsourced, not even the props, which were pulled from the company’s enormous prop room. “That’s what makes us unique,” Tillman says of the company’s ability to handle all details, without the need for outsourcing. He says this one-stop service enables the company to turn around projects quickly. He walks through an imaging department in another part of the building. There, gigantic photos are produced for clients for use in trade shows and retail store displays. Tillman passes a large stand-up photograph of Ernest Hemingway, created a few years ago for a Hemingway line made by Thomasville Furniture Co. Innovation has finally forced the retirement of a piece of equipment that defined Alderman for decades. Gone are the ancient Deardorff cameras with mahogany frames. The cameras remained unchanged from the time the Deardorff company of Chicago started making them in 1923. Alderman gradually phased them out, though some were still in use well into this decade. The famous outdoor photographer Ansel Adams lugged a Deardorff to Yosemite and other remote locales to produce landscape photos that bring high prices today. The Deardorffs competed well for a while against digital cameras, which started appearing in the early 1990s. The quality of film was superior to April/May 2012
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