Practical Illusions was founded over  25 years ago by Steve Oakley. PI has been based in Wisconsin for over 20 years. Our first location was in downtown Wausau on the town square located in a classic 1929 brick building. We spent a decade there providing local and national clients with amazing video content. Those early days were filled with consistently creating award winning level work. As innovators we had the first HD camera in town in 2002. To go with the new camera we built out a complete HD edit room featuring 5.1 SRS mixing. We also served as a beta test site for a variety of ground breaking software applications and hardware during that time. It meant  having the newest cool toys before anyone else knew they existed. It was exciting and innovative times to be sure and that hasn’t stopped.

  In 2012 we moved south to Beaver Dam to better work with local Milwaukee and Madison based clients. From the new location, the drive up to Green Bay turned out to be still the same.

  Throughout this time we have worked with all of the national networks providing camera, sound, lighting and crew for a wild variety of projects from news, sports ( Packers, Bucks, Herd, Brewers, Badgers and more), feature packages and multicam live shoots. This has led us to expand out our gear from cameras, lighting, sound and to all sorts of additional support gear. When you get the usual last minute  call for a job you just have it ready to load it up and go. It’s also kind of a given that it takes not just top end gear but top end skills to get projects done. Its the skillset that keeps clients coming back year after year. We are known as one of the true go to crews in the midwest for reliability, knowledge, experience and having all the extras that make tough days easier. Please feel free to ask about the coffee machine in my van as producer favorite !

  While broadcast TV kept us more than busy, we continued doing plenty of corporate and commercial work as well.  One example is working as DP for the Skittles Pride Campaign in 2022. We are currently expanding more into the commercial area and other forms of online content.  At this point we have become ever more aware that content can have  consequences and really prefer to work with clients whose messaging is positive.