Michigan man builds his own film studio to fight Obesity.

Macomb Townsip, MI

Entrepreneurs and visionaries have been known to do whatever it takes to get their product to market, or business up and running, but one Michigan resident took his dream to places where even the wildest of inventors would dare to go - dumpsters.

Yes, one man's dream to start a children's TV show focusing on physical fitness and exercise actually started at the dumpsters, and he's quite proud of it. Michael Schmidt is the proud father of 4 young children, and after watching his children spend large amounts of time in front of a television, he decided to change the way children watched TV.

He saw that children loved watching the characters on TV, so he created one himself, using his own children at his kitchen table to give their feedback on what features they like and didn't. When he was confident he had a character that children would love and follow on screen, he had his character turned into a costume. When it was finished, Michael had created a 7 ft tall, fuzzy blue, smiling, green-horned creature he name Buddy Bigfoot.

He had a character kids would love, he had an idea to change the way children would watch TV, but he didn't have the money to rent a building to film around his 60-70 hours a week he worked, so he did something that not many people in the world could do - he built a film studio, and did so entirely out of garbage. "When I told my wife I was going to build a film studio, she looked at me like I was crazy, not just crazy, completely out of it crazy. I don't think she even believed I could do it until I brought her there and showed her"

Every morning before work, he drove by the local construction sites and picked through the lumber they had thrown away. It took him 6 months of dumpster diving in snow filled dumpsters, but when he was done, he had a pile of used lumber the size of a small shed.

He began working every free moment he had, after work, before work, and even on holidays. Instead of staying up late and watching the ball drop on New Years Eve, Michael was working outside in the cold with a flashlight constructing support beams for the roof. Instead of sleeping in on his rare days off, he would go work a few hours on the studio before the kids and his wife got up. Between the early mornings and the late nights, he estimates he spent 600-800 hours completely by himself constructing his film studio over the past 4 years.

Almost every material used to construct the homemade film studio was discarded or thrown away. He used pallets for the floor, old vinyl billboards for part of the roof and sides to keep the elements out, and he even used dead wild grass from his landscaping at his house as decorative bamboo. When it was all said and done, he had constructed a 1200 square foot building to film in.

"Besides my kids, this is the thing I am proudest of in my life. I set out to build a film studio without having much money, and besides the drywall, paint and carpeting, everything I used I got either from a dumpster or was given to me. It makes me proud to say there's not another person in the world that has done what I have, and now I'm going to use that studio and film shows which will help get kids exercising."

Michael's shows are like no other children's TV show. Buddy Bigfoot makes sure kids up and following him at home each and every show, by talking to them as if he was right there with them. Not only is he asking the kids to follow along, but he's doing all of the fun filled movements on screen in his costume. It's not your standard exercise show where he is doing jumping jacks and push ups either. Buddy takes kids on adventures through the forest, jumping over logs, wading through streams, teaches them about playing sports, practices the movements with them, and even plays fun filled games with them. He calls his shows "Exercise Made Fun" because the children are having so much fun, they don't even know they are exercising.

To take his videos to the next level, Michael has started a Kickstarter, which you can support here.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1890144343/help-buddy-bigfoot-fight-childhood-obesity

One things for sure, there is not another person in this world more committed to making his dream come true than him. So look out world, Bigfoot was finally found, and he's going to make you want to exercise with him!

Jonathon Jacobs