DVD Madness

I know.. my blogging has been a little late lately. But for good reason: I have been busy. And I mean BUSY!! My little media production "hobby" that keeps life interesting during the fall sports season, seems to be taking over more and more of my life. The last two months are a testament to that by producing 6 new DVD productions in the last 2 months. Ug. Here's the break down of projects:

1. C-CERT Training DVD for Lane Community College (C-CERT stands for Campus-Community Emergency Response Team). This was fun as I was able to film all kinds of emergency training drills, from folks with all matter of bloody injuries, to a smoke filled house to fire hose training.

2. Universal Nut Crackers: A local company who produces industrial strength nut cracking machines needed some marketing help by producing a video to send out to potential customers.

3. Territorial Elementary: Grades 3 - 5. This was a project done by my wife. Throughout the school year she shot video at Little Calvin's schools performances, assemblies, parties, etc. and then edited everything down onto a DVD for interested parents. Since she did all the filming and editing, I pretty much just acted as an Executive Producer, meaning she'd occasionally need help with some tricky sequences and I'd help out, I'd offer general advice on pacing, help if she couldn't decided between several shots, author DVDs, do the graphic design for the cases and disks, etc. She did 95% of the work and did a fantastic job, but some evenings really got crazy with both of us (and multiple computers running all over the house) as we worked on different project's deadlines some nights.

4. Territorial Elementary: Grades Kindergarten and Second Grade: Same as above. We intended to release just one DVD, but there ended up being so much content, we had to split it into two disks to handle it all.

5. Territorial Elementary: First Grade: This was the third of the disks filmed and edited by Dawn and was a special look at Little Calvin's class, their activities, all the kids and special events throughout the year. The highlight was a 12 minute montage covering all kinds of activities throughout the year that showed the fun times and all the growth. It's a tear-jerker (according to all the parents from the class). Again, my wife did a great job.

6. My biggie project.. and probably the DVD I am most pleased with so far: The Marist High School Senior Class DVD Tribute. I was approached about potentially producing this video last fall and immediately my head filled with ideas. I asked those who were hiring me for the DVDs that had been produced in years past and when I saw those, I knew I could do better. They were just too cheesy. Too high school silliness. After all the hard work the students go through they needed a video that would salute all that dedication. Something that would both pay tribute, and remind them of the good times. Something that would equally represent all groups, sports and activities, not just the stereotypical "high school things". And so I came up with a mental vision of something that I thought would be appropriate.

It took until early March to negotiate the final deal and I got the thumbs up to begin filming. That left me just over 2 months to film enough to give proper coverage to all the activities and sports. But the big project was what I called the "senior tribute". I found one of the best writers in the class and had her write a "senior statement", a summary of all the class had done and been through, as well as what they learned from this whole high school experience. I then took that statement and broke it into 134 individual parts, one for each senior. (And to give proper credit where credit is due.. this project wouldn't have been nearly the success that it was without the powerhouse script. THANK YOU ABBIE!!!)

Over a period of 3 weeks, I spend my lunch breaks from work on campus filming each senior, one at a time, speaking their parts. This proved to be entertaining as each part ranged from 2 words, to maybe a short sentence. They had no clue what they were talking about, but trusted it would all work out. The trickiest part was tracking down all the seniors that tried to avoid us (one actually attempted to hide in his car), but in the end, we got every last one of the seniors in front of the camera, making it a full class tribute. Luckily I had two fantastic production coordinators to help with all of this (Thanks Molly and Diza!!)

The whole point of this was to have a "main feature" for this DVD that would be handed out to all the graduating seniors. That is what I was hired to do. But my goals were bigger than that. I wanted a video, that when seen by the administration, would suddenly make them say "This is GREAT... We HAVE to show this during the actual graduation ceremony itself!!!" And luckily, that goal was accomplished. Sure it was a little intimidating showing my brain child to a group of 2,500 plus people all at once. But the reaction was great and it made all the editing hours worth while. The next speaker after the video was all choked up as he started and many wiped tears. Making people cry.... good times...

By the time it was all done, the DVD included the tribute segment followed by a montage of their activities from the year, a video showing all the seniors and their baby photos, and fun little segment I put together featuring trivia about the seniors (with them admitting all sorts of past things that no one would have expected them to do), graduation, baccalaureate and grad night highlights.. even some Easter eggs.

All in all, it was a great project that brought back a lot of memories from my own high school experiences. Filming several state championship games, the prom, assemblies, all sorts of stuff, really took me back. And now these seniors have quite the way to remember what a place Marist High School has been. (Not to throw in the sales pitch, but feel free to order one yourself.. just because you don't know anyone is no excuse... Click here to order!)

There is already talk of my doing this again next year and at this point I have no clue what I'll do. Luckily I have 10 months to come up with a creative concept, but right now as I am finally finished with a HUGE project, I need to sleep. I need to exercise as I haven't been running in months. I need to watch my Netflix movies that have been sitting on the TV forever. It's a fun job... it's a very rewarding job, but a very time consuming one.

So, in case you were wondering why I wasn't updating my blog for weeks on end.. you can see I was a bit swamped. But luckily, we leave for Orlando tomorrow and I can put all my insanity behind me for 10 days. That is until the next round of projects begin.