A typical day's work for Louis Hocevar used to read like a day on the set of Miami Vice -- hanging out of helicopters to shoot offshore speedboats and fast cars winding along the ocean.

Like Miami Vice, the Don Johnson days are mostly a thing of the past for Ponte Vedra Beach-based Hocevar Video Inc, which now has a more corporate-based clientele at its full-service production company. Its client list includes Fortune 500 companies like Pfizer, IBM and American Express -- big names won over by word of mouth and many years of establishing contacts and clients.

These days the company focuses on "business theater," namely, corporate shows for employee recognition events and pharmaceutical product launches. The company also does broadcast commercials for boat shows in Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach , local community service videos and promotional commercials for local authors.

Hocevar Video launched in 1979 in Miami. Louis Hocevar, the president, director and cameraman for the company, began with the idea of producing TV commercials for local Miami clients, including jewelry stores, car dealerships and an air conditioning company whose commercial was produced using comedian Jackie Mason.

At the same time, Louis Hocevar worked as a freelance handheld helicopter cameraman for CBS and NBC chasing NASCAR and IndyCar races, and race boats -- something that has helped his business as the number of handheld cameramen has dwindled.

Liliana Kurpanik joined Louis Hocevar as his full-time partner in work -- and in life -- in 1995. The two moved the company to Ponte Vedra Beach the next year. The company's editing studio is based in their home, although most of the firm's clients are in New York. The couple spends between 130 and 180 days a year shooting and editing on location.

Hocevar Video shoots new car commercials in Los Angeles, for example, because most other cities don't have cranes that can lift cars onto cliffs. Kurpanik compared it to a pseudo-movie production that can cost up to $1 million per day of shooting when crew, equipment, permits and insurance are all factored in.

One of the more challenging things Hocevar Video has to do is make up a budget for clients; the company charges by the project, not by hour. Working within the budget is key.

"We keep a tab for them," Louis said. "You want to always have a satisfied client; you never want them to be annoyed if they've gone over budget." Louis Hocevar and his wife do it all. They shoot, edit and handle big- screen projection for corporations for everything from training events to commercials about things employees can do for fun while at training in exotic cities like Bali. The two also create DVDs and podcasts for workers in other cities who can't attend the meetings.

Pfizer, a client with Hocevar Video for about a decade, recently hired the company to come to San Francisco to produce training videos for its sales reps. The purpose of the video is simple, Kurpanik said: To make sure that when sales reps visit doctors they can easily articulate why the drug they're selling is different. It's a critical training tool.

Training is one element of Hocevar Video's work, but with the proliferation of the Internet, the company has also been called on to do everything from uploading videos to Web sites to creating and distributing podcasts.

Take its work for IBM, a client since the early 1980s. Louis Hocevar recently spent time filming an all-star lineup of speakers in the Bahamas. There were three IBM groups represented, one from Europe, one from Asia-Pacific, and another from the Americas -- each with special guests. Louis Hocevar took the three-hours worth of speeches, from the likes of Bill Clinton, Patrick Stewart and Tommy Lee Jones -- and cut them into 30-minute videos that could be podcast and uploaded onto the corporate Web site for workers at various IBM offices to view.

"Two years ago, nobody used to walk in and go, 'Can you put this speech online for me?'" Louis said. "Now, it's like, 'of course I can, sir.'" Keeping up with technological advances has other advantages. The first editing studio Hocevar Video bought cost $100,000, and took up an entire room. Now the company has a pair of editing systems that cost $9,000 each and fit in the overhead compartment of an airplane.

Hocevar Video does most of its work on location in big cities like New York or Los Angeles.

Louis Hocevar and Kurpanik said they'd like to do more local work, but it's not as lucrative. They can typically charge more and usually earn $20,000 to $100,000 for projects in bigger cities. A project they did for a St. Augustine art gallery cost around $3,000 -- for shooting, editing and scripting.

Hocevar Video charges per project, not per day, so estimating what the budget will be for a production is a huge factor in their profit margin.

"There's New York and L.A. prices, and then there's the rest of the United States," Louis Hocevar said.