Home sweet home production studio
Lepping family lets film crew transform home for shoot
BY JENNIFER KOHLHEPP
Staff Writer

PHOTOSBY ERIC SUCAR staff Above, a Millstone Township home on Whispering Spring Drive was turned into a production studio with wires, cameras and lights on May 2 for the filming of a medical short that will be shown to doctors across the nation. At left, actress Franki Travis, of Brooklyn, N.Y., has the light on her face metered during a shoot in the Lepping family's home.

MILLSTONE - A Whispering Spring Drive family let lights, cameras and action into their home last week for a film shoot.

Mary and Dave Lepping didn't mind having to put their three precious pugs at a neighbor's house for a while, nor did they care much when their living room and kitchen were turned into a busy production studio for the filming of a short about ulcerative colitis. The film will be shown at a medical conference in Washington, D.C., May 21.

The worldwide rate of ulcerative colitis is estimated to be between 100 to 200 cases per 100,000 people. The chronic condition, which is characterized by the presence of diffuse mucosal inflammation in the colon, can cause bouts of upset stomach, diarrhea and blood in the stools, according to information provided by Dave Lepping. Lepping owns Health Care First in Plainsboro, a company that helps create films and other media presentations about various topics in the health industry.

According to Lepping, ulcerative colitis often goes misdiagnosed or undiagnosed because the symptoms of the disease are similar to other medical conditions.

In the film, an actress portrays a woman who has just returned from a trip to Mexico. She is speaking to someone off camera about the symptoms she has been experiencing.

"At first I thought it was traveler's diarrhea I was experiencing, but now I'm not so sure because I never heard of anyone having blood in their stool from traveler's diarrhea," the actress, Kaydence Frank, of New York City, said.

Daz Media, of Hackensack, filmed the piece with a script created by the Duke University School of Medicine. The university identifies areas in the medical field where doctors may need continuing education. The school then writes the scripts for the educational films, based on actual scenarios doctors have been in, according to Lepping.

Jacqueline Menconi, a production manger at Daz Media, said, "These productions are most important because they help doctors. They help to create discussion."

The film will be used at the conference to help physicians identify and diagnose ulcerative colitis in their patients. The film humanizes the learning experience for doctors, Menconi said.

"When the doctors see someone on the screen acting the symptoms of the disease out, they relate to it more," she said. "Reading about it is so cut and dried. I'm not saying that reading is not important, but the films show a different side of the story, a human element that doctors can relate to."

"Different people learn in different ways," said Greg Kloiber, vice president of Health Care First. "There are many different educational modalities to choose from."

Kloiber said he and many other people learn better and more quickly when the information is presented visually through various forms of media.

"In this day and age, we need to adopt as many different educational modalities as are made available," he said.

Daz Productions and Health Care First have also created films and video flash pieces on other medical topics, including female health care, oral contraception, and attention deficit disorder, Menconi said.

"Everything we look at are clearly topics of the day," she said.

Lepping said it was fun turning his home into a film studio for a day.

"We typically do this in a sound studio," he said.

Amid a mess of wires, piles of papers, bright lights, heaps of studio equipment and the swarming film cast and crew, his wife said she was having fun and that she would do it all again if she had to.