April Fools... May Therapy

What's that old saying? Ah yes, I believe its "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." That phrase seems to be coming to mind a lot as we enter the month of April and one of my favorite days: April Fools Day. Now, I tend to be known as somewhat of a prankster, the kind of guy that thrives on a good practical joke, immature or otherwise. But the problem is, I seem to have a history of good jokes that somehow manage to backfire in their execution, causing panic, fear and internal scarring, rather than the intended laughter. I have good intentions… give people a fun joke to remember, but something always seems to go wrong. (Or I am just evil… as I keep telling my kids.) Remember this incident?

Several days ago, Little Calvin came to me with one of the worst things he could say.. "Dad, I am unprankable this year.. you just can't get me on April Fools Day." I'm, sorry Son, that's a CHALLENGE… and a creative challenge which I thrive on. I suddenly had a mission to prove him wrong, and give him an April Fools day to remember! Now, the child is 9, which means I don't have to go over-the-top in my planning. All those stereotypical, immature, fun pranks of my youth were coming in handy. I seran-wrapped his toilet, put food coloring in his breakfast milk to make it look disgusting as he poured it, loaded his school backpack with giant, heavy books so he could barely lift it, and flipped his computer desktop upside down, and short sheeted his bed (which he'll discover later).

But just as I was finishing my set up, I suddenly had a fun idea: buried deep in his closet from many years ago, were some Star Wars full sized cardboard cutouts, one of which was Princess Leia holding a blaster out as if she were shooting you. I thought it would be humorous to stick this in the hallway so that as he came around the corner, he'd see it, jump a little, then laugh because it was a Star Wars character. All innocent fun, right?

As it turned out, when this morning came, I had left early to go teach my seminary class. My wife yelled from the kitchen for him to get up and start getting ready for school. He complied and got up without turning the lights on. As he came around the corner, bleary eyed and not at all focused on reality, all he saw was a person at the end of the dark hallway, dark and ominous, aiming a gun at him. Obviously, he went into panic mode, and when my wife got out of the shower and came to check on his progress, he was huddled in the corner sobbing giant tears and scared out of his mind. It took her 30 minutes to get him calmed down enough to begin his day.

When the phone call came in to me from my very frustrated wife, and her message that I should not mess with someones deepest, darkest fears (having a bad person in the house is one of Little Calvin's) I felt horrible. Like I said, I intended it to be a little jump and a "ha ha Dad.. nice…" but instead I may have traumatized him for life.

Way to go… Dad...

But sadly, this is not the first time one of my pranks has gone askew. Several years ago, and in my former job, I had a friend that worked for me named Brian. And Brian HATED needles. Just the thought of them would make him queasy and light headed. At the end of March, after years of trying, our co-workers finally convinced him to conquer his fear and donate blood. This was not an easy task for him! It took a lot of doing! By the end of the blood donation, Brian was sick to his stomach, about ready to faint and sick for the rest of the day. His wife had to come drive him home.

Fast forward several days to evil me, wanting to come up with a good April Fools joke for each member of my staff. What better joke to play on Brian that to try to convince him that he had to go through this whole ordeal all over again. My plan was simple.. I was going to have a female friend call him on the phone acting like she was a nurse from the local blood bank. She was to simply tell him that there was a problem with his blood donation (it got lost, the bag broke, etc.) and that in order for him to receive credit for the donation, he'd have to come donate again right away. Then I could watch him go through all that paranoia and annoyance of having to repeat the whole ordeal.

But that's not what happened. As it turns out, my friend playing the nurse on the phone, was not the best actress in the world (no offense, Tracy…) and had a hard time with improv. What ended up coming out of her mouth was "There is a problem with your blood, you need to come down and see us right away!" By the time poor Brian got off the phone, he seriously thought he was dying and just about had a full fledged panic attack on the spot, at the thought of what could be so wrong with his blood that they'd have to call him. Needless to say, when he discovered it was all a joke, he wasn't very happy with me and my little "harmless tricks".

One more…

Years… and years… ago, back in my Ricks College days, I was hanging out with some friends. It was very late at night and I was supposed to be working on a readers theater project with my friends Lori, and Rebecca from the Forensics team. But somehow we got distracted and began the art of evil plotting a fun little prank.

The concept was simple… we'd call my roommate, wake him up, and make him think there had been some crazy, random phone system glitch. When he picked up the phone, he'd suddenly be listening to some random conversation between two strangers. Even as he said "Hello?! Hellllllo?!" he'd suddenly realize that while he could hear the other end of the conversation, they could not hear him. He'd then realize he was privy to a conversation between to unknowing people.

And what was this conversation? My friend Lori played to role of a hysterical baby sitter, who had apparently lost her patience with a baby, shaking it to its death (holy cow… this sounds horrible as I type this… I WAS evil…). Rebecca was the sympathetic friend she had called for advice. Through the tears and the pain of the panicked conversation "What to I do?! Do I call the police?! Should we hide the body and run?" my poor roommate, suddenly had to decide what HE should do? Should he keep listening? Should he hang up and try to forget he ever heard this? Should he call the police, and if he did, what would he tell them? Was this some heavenly intervention through a phone glitch that allowed him to know the truth of a dark secret? Thoughts constantly swirled through his head.

Eventually, he opted to just hang up (after which the 4 of us all busted up laughing, completely oblivious to our traumatizing behavior on others) and in the wee hours of the morning when I finally got home, he was still up and concerned at what he should do. While I don't remember exactly what he did, when he found out it was just a fun little joke, I know that we kept him traumatized for quite some time.

Sure, today is meant to be fun, a day of laughs with our family, friends, and co-workers. But (and I am speaking to myself) let's make sure that the stunts we pull aren't going to do too much future damage to the poor recipients.

Oh, and to the countless hordes of people who have been vowing revenge on me for years for all my various pranks, just know that I am leaving the country this afternoon (Yeah, right).. wont be back for a looooooong time, hopefully after your short-term memory has faded a bit.. Today is about me pranking YOU.. not you getting revenge on me!!!!

Now… Happy April Fools Day!

Bad Blogger, Going Mad

What?! A new blog post on Calvin's Cosmos?!

I know... I know... I managed to take what was once a successful blog, with active readers and kill it due to months of inactivity. The single best way to kill a blog is to leave it sitting dormant. And I have been feeling guilty about it. Especially this last week as I finally found a gold mine of old friends I had been searching for on Facebook for a long time. I know each could be visiting my blog, to read of all my adventures, and seeing that there had been no update since last July. And so, as busy as I am right now, I vowed to try to get a posting up.

But my lack of recent blogging isn't due to my sitting around being lazy! Quite the contrary! I have been going out of my mind nutty lately! Let me use this post as an explanation and I think it will make sense why the Cosmos has been neglected.

When I last posted in blogland, it was July of 2009. I was unemployed having lost my awesome job of the last 12 years when the economy tanked and people abruptly stopped buying half a million dollar RVs. I was keeping plenty busy with freelance work, but still needing a good job to keep the bills paid consistently. In August, things suddenly trend around. One of the vendors that I worked with a lot (the group that printed all my DVD covers) called to tell me they had an open position for a graphic designer and wanted to encourage me to apply. The position was just part-time, but I figured this was ideal, as I could spent time in my job, then spend the rest of my time building up Steve Barth Media Productions. As it turned out, I got the job and within the first month I went from working part time hours to full time, as that is what the job demanded. And so, at last, I was back to work.

About this time, I began what I can only call "My insanity"... Something I will not do again: attempt to produce 2 films, on 2 different subjects, simultaneously. Note to self: doing 2 very mentally intensive films at once is a Baaaaaad idea. I had filmed "Last Week" back in April of 2009, and while the principal photography portion was done, it still had to be edited and produced. Then, in mid-August, I began actively filming my next sport movie called "4A Foray". Half my brain was tied up in a film about a musical, and half my brain was tied up in filming and editing a volleyball film. It just about made me blow a head gasket. Soon, I had to postpone "Last Week" to the spring of 2010 in order to not go crazy and learn to just focus on one major project at a time.

One of the fun things about continuing to produce my fall volleyball film, is that I constantly have to do things differently.. to avoid just making the same film each season. And this year was no different, as I had some of the most ambitious plans ever for this film. One of my crazy ideas was for what I called a "spin cam", a camera rig that would hang from the gym ceiling, and spin around the players as they practiced. After a lot of brainstorming, I am proud to say, I built what my brain was thinking and I successfully filmed with it. Although it was fun explaining this to my wife and hearing her reaction... "Let me get this straight... you want to take your super expensive camera, suspend it upside down high above a super hard gym floor and spin it in circles?!" But like I said... we did it!

Here's a little peak at this years film (and it's the one I am most proud of, out of all my volleyball films!) If you wait for the second half, you can even see some of my spin cam footage (my favorite shot is at the 5:37 mark... Thanks Merc, for looking like a bad ass..)



And if you only have a minute.. Here's a quick promo video. Yes, I was doing more of these this season:



So... working full time, and attempting to edit one film while simultaneously shoot and edit another one, with all the travel that goes into it... what does my life really need at this point? Yup.. one more super time-consuming challenge. From 1999 - 2002, I taught early morning seminary and LOVED IT! I considered it my favorite calling in the church. So last summer when my Bishop approached me about returning to start teaching again, I jumped at the opportunity. Even with all I knew was going to be happening in the fall, I jumped at the opportunity. And so, in early September, I began teaching my class of 12 freshman and sophomores each morning at 6:15 AM and adding class prep to my lightly to-do list.

And you wonder why I slacked on the blog... Some days during the craziest part of this whole schedule played out like this: Teach seminary at 6:15, be to work by 8, work 8 - 5, go film a volleyball game from 5 - 9, go home and edit from 9 PM - 5 AM, prep seminary from 5 - 6 AM, then repeat... Who needs sleep, right?

So.. let's see.. what else have I missed reporting on? There was a trip to Disneyland in August (the weekend before volleyball filming began) to celebrate Little Calvin's birthday...



There was Halloween (and Little Calvin's awesome Legolas from Lord of the Rings costume):

There was Dawn's Birthday...

And Christmas...

And New Years, with my traditional "Year in Review" video that I put together over the New Years holiday weekend:



Even Valentines Day:

And that brings me to March of 2010. Have things gotten any better? Not quite. Take this weekend for example, where I will be:

-Continue to edit "Last Week" as it finally has a premier date of April 17th, where I am flying to Colorado to premier the film for those that helped me make it.
-Produce a video for a client that is due on Monday.
-Try to finish producing 2 websites, for local clients patiently waiting their completion
-Film 2 games of the state basketball playoffs tomorrow for one of my upcoming projects.
-Shoot family photos (another service added to my business offerings in 2009) for a local family, before their father is deployed next week.

And so... yes... I have neglected my blog just a touch. Not because I have lost interest in writing or communicating, just for pure business reasons. Plus, Facebook makes it so easy to quickly update my status....

Its amazing, I know.. to have a blog update done! With so many stories ready to share and so much that is happening in my media world, let's just hope I can continue to find time to keep this going. Calvin's Cosmos is a good thing for me, I need to keep it going!!

Blessing or Curse: Behind the Scenes of the Youtube Victory

July 15, 2009: One crazy day! The day actually began at 9:00 the night before, as the clock reached midnight on the east coast, and the winner was announced. That's when the world became a very surreal place.. then a very dark place for the next 24 hours.

As most of you know, the kids and I decided to enter a Harry Potter contest on Youtube. It all started out so simple: one day I was surfing around my typical list of Harry Potter websites as I was sucked into the hype surrounding the release of the 6th film. On one of the sites I saw an ad for a video contest, the kind of thing that typically gets my attention as I enjoy the creative challenge. This one was simple: create a 90 second video explaining a Harry Potter style magical potion, how to make it and then demonstrate what effects it had. The only problem, the contest deadline for entries was that night at midnight. We had very little time to put this together.

I quickly grabbed Amanda and Little Calvin (Tyler was in Colorado visiting the grandparents for the week) and we began to brainstorm possible ideas. As I had been working on editing my mom's documentary, and had been neck deep in listening to stories of my Uncle's cruel pranks on my mom as a kid, suddenly a story popped to mind. At one point in time, while my mom was getting ready for a date, my uncle and a buddy snuck into the bathroom, and slipped out all her clothes, towels, bath mats, etc. leaving her stranded in the bathroom. Then, with her stuck, they delivered her diary to her waiting date, so that he could read everything she had written about him. This story has always been a favorite growing up, and suddenly we had a direction for our video... just done in a magical way.

We decided to create a video that would have much the same effect: it combines a bunch of random ingredients that when drunk, would magically give the drinker the power to "zap" things in and out. Little Calvin would make the potion, then in an attempt to humiliate his sister prior to her first date, would zap the towels, bath mats and shower curtains out of the bathroom. Then, taking his prank to the next level (as is normal for me), he would zap his sisters date into the house, then into the bathroom. This seemed really funny to us in our little naive world. I never really considered how the rest of the world may interpret this little stunt. In my mind.. if the video could have continued, the very next scene would have shown the poor, embarrassed young kid bailing out of the bathroom door.

When it came time to film this particular scene that night, we had a problem. In my original vision of this I pictured finding some obviously young kid starring in the "date" role. He'd get zapped in all dressed up in a shirt and tie, holding a corsage and looking all nervous, and then get zapped in the bathroom. Seeing the fear and awkwardness of the young, scared and obviously inexperienced kid, would create the awkward comedy that I was going for. But this particular night.. there were no teenagers to be found.. anywhere. All the kids from church were at scout camp that week, and the neighbors were all gone. Little Calvin and I even rode around the neighborhood on our bikes trying to find a teenager... ANY teenager. But none could be found. In desperation to get something in place so I could at least get the timing down, we decided to film me in the role, until we could find someone, then I'd just swap out the shot. But before we knew it, the midnight deadline was upon us, and not thinking about the public perception we uploaded our contest entry and called it good. The video made us laugh, and that's all that counted. Besides.. I figured with all the competition, this would never go anywhere.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the video got some attention, receiving maybe a few hundred hits from people watching and voting on their favorites. We just had to wait until July 15th to find out who won. And the prize was very simple: the winning video was to be featured on the home page of YouTube. Nothing big. We did the video for fun, not because the prize seemed all that great.

Now we are back to July 14th, 9 PM pacific, as I logged into Youtube only to see Little Calvin featured on the front. How cool! We had won and I was excited.

Now.. quick side note... a few years ago I saw a commercial which made me smile.. I don't even remember the company that it was for. But it showed a group of web developers launching their new website. Soon after hitting the launch button they received 10 orders and they all cheered. Suddenly it was 50 orders, then 100 orders and they all went ballistic in happiness for finding success. But then the numbers kept climbing.. 1,000 orders, 10,000 orders, 50,000 orders, 125,000 orders.. and suddenly all that excitement was swept away and was replaced by horror as everyone realized that they now had to fulfill all these orders. They wanted success.. but when it came on suddenly, somewhere a line was crossed from "cool" to "fear". That about sums up the next 24 hours for me.

By midnight.. just 3 hours in, Little Calvin's video had over 8,000 views, doubling any other video I had ever posted. And suddenly I started feeling a little.. uncomfortable... It was like 8,000 people were staring at my kid, and peering into my living room. Then I realized there was a whole other level to this. I checked my e-mail only to find my in-box absolutely flooded with e-mails, coming in at almost 3 every minute. About 90% of the comments were very positive and encouraging.

"Cute video."

"This kids a winner!"

"Ohhh. how cute!"

"You totally made me laugh!"

On and on.. but mixed in with these comments, I found something I never expected.. HATE. THREATS. PROFANITY. People were saying ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE, SICKENING things about my child. I couldn't believe it. This was simply a kid who had entered a contest to show his love for the Harry Potter characters, movies and books that he loves, and people were saying far worse things than I ever thought I would be reading. I suddenly found myself sick to my stomach.. what had I just done?

By the time I woke up the next morning, after a very light sleep, over 90,000 people had watched the video and my in-box was overflowing. Again.. mostly positive comments, but many were filled with hate, vulgarity and even threats against us for putting our child on Youtube, for subjecting him to witchcraft, and even to forcing him to drink glass shards. PEOPLE ACTUALLY THOUGHT IT WAS REAL! Hasn't anyone heard of movie making?! Yes, and the Harry Potter characters actually fly on brooms and cast spells. Good Grief.

That's when I realized that my little naive idea, was being perceived in a way that I never intended in my rush to get it finished and uploaded.

"What a sick kid! He zaps some old fat creep into his sisters bathroom to rape her!"

WHAT!? NO NO NO NO NO! That is so not what I was thinking!! But the hate mail continued to pour in. I never dreamed people would read sexual innuendos into our video, they would look at it as promoting homosexuality (I'm totally not kidding), violence, sexual molestation, racism (not kidding there either) and child abuse.

By the end of the 24 hours on Youtube's home page, I was counting down the minutes until it was removed and things could finally calm down a bit. The video was getting close to clearing 200,000 views, numbers so far beyond what I was expecting, it was nuts. I spent several hours that night attempting to carefully go through over 1200 comments, deleting all the offensive ones, so that if Little Calvin ever looked through the comments he wouldn't freak out. People have a right to not like the video, that is totally fine and in our free country they can disagree or not understand the video. I left those comments there. But for those that got out of hand, or used foul language, I exercised my rights as the video owner to delete their comments and block them from making future ones. If they can exercise their freedoms, so can I.

Now, a week and a half later, views have slowed dramatically. We will soon cross the 200,000 threshold, which is still so weird to me. It was just so bizarre to read all these comments. The good news... as a struggling filmmaker, trying to find ways of getting eyeballs on my work.. suddenly having my Youtube channel pounded for a day, was great. Not only did our Harry Potter video get slammed, but all my videos as well. I went from 2 subscribers to almost 150 overnight, thus giving me more chances at exposure for my films. It just felt very odd, like having 200,000 people peering in my living room, and being critical of what they saw all at once.

Was the prize a help, or a hindrance? A blessing or a curse? Did I just do something to help my career, or expose my kids to the scum of the world? I haven't fully sorted my feelings out yet. But what a wild and crazy day, one that I will not soon forget!

------------------

Side note: Last week I was doing some late night channel surfing to wind down for the day and came across the intro for "The Soup" on the E! network. Suddenly Joel McHale, the host, starts taking about clips of Harry Potter fans making videos of potions and I literally yelled "NOOOOOOO!" at my TV. It was weird enough to wrap my head around 200,000 Youtube views, but having my child on "The Soup" was just too much. Luckily, He was referring to something else. For a second I feared this could get even more out of control, but it didn't go there.

We Won!

Quick note!

I just found out that we won the Harry Potter Youtube potions video contest. Our winning video is being used to help promote the opening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and will be featured on the home page of Youtube ONLY ON Wednesday, July 15th. Just go to Youtube, and watch the big Harry Potter banner across the top of the screen.. and sure enough, there is Little Calvin, plotting revenge on his sister.

More information, on the video and "what the heck we were thinking" coming soon!

2 Months of Insanity

Time to take a breath! Time to come back to the real world, step away from the camera and video editing software for a moment. Time to finally post a blog update.

Most regular readers of the blog know that May and June can be some of the crazier months for me, what with so many video projects hitting at once. As it's been a while since I have posted, let me do a quick recap. Over the last 2 months, here's what's been on the schedule:

1. Filming the Colorado documentary: I already posted on the filming process and a quick trailer for the upcoming film, which is finally starting the editing phase this week.

2. The "Sound of Music" performance DVDs: To help finance my Mom's documentary film, and since I was there anyway, I offered to film my mom's last musical, not as part of the documentary film, but for the performance, for people to buy to remember the actual play. A simple guy would just pop a camera on a tripod, press record, and burn out the results to disk. But me being me, I don't do things the easy way. I had to film all three nights from multiple camera angles and then put together a "performance" not from one night, but taking the best from all 3 nights and combining them into one. That translates into big workloads, and a fast turnaround as we promised to have finished DVDs delivered to them prior to their graduation just 2 weeks after the performance.

3. Marist Senior Tribute: A HUGE project for me, taking a ton of time. This is a special tribute DVD developed for the graduating class of Marist High School. There is an interesting story for me to tell in conjunction with this project, but I will save that for when I can post bits of the video online, whereas now, that could hurt DVD sales. So for now, suffice it to say that the project took a lot of time over the last 3 months, but the huge order of DVDs was dropped off yesterday.. and I can finally breath again.

4. Territorial Elementary: Each year my wife and I work together to document the year for Little Calvin's class and their growth. From classroom activities, to assemblies, to field trips, it all gets combined into one DVD for the parents. Since all the schools end at the same time, the deadlines for this disk are usually the same as for the Marist videos, making for one hellish, sleep deprived week! But we get it done somehow. Luckily, Dawn does a majority of the editing and assembly for these, but it still requires clean up, special introductions, and sound mixing from me.

5. Marist Graduation: Although its for the same school and related to the graduating class, it's a completely different project: filming the graduation ceremony (requiring multiple cameras and a lot of coordination) and then editing and producing the DVDs.

6. Camp Wilani DVDs: Every other year, Little Calvin's school, and I mean the ENTIRE school spends a week at a local summer camp for outdoor school. The experience is very rewarding for the kids (even when freak, intense, severe storms cause the evacuation of camp one day) and of course that means that our cameras are rolling, filming the week. This project has a FAST turn around, as the camp is held shortly before the end of school, and the disks must be produced in time to get them to parents before summer break starts. Again, my wife works a lot of hours keeping up on the editing, and I work the other details. I'd say we make a very good team!

7. Business projects: In my free time (ha!) I also produced a video for a local engineering firm to use to help sell one of their high tech products. Due to the specifics on the contract and the proprietary nature of the shoot, I can't go into details, but.. suffice it to say it was a fun shoot, and interesting video to put together as a break from looking at high school or elementary school students.

8. "The Great Pine Cone War": Finally, in a bit of insanity, I somehow agreed to help our local scout troop earn their cinematography merit badge. I joined them on an overnight camp-out to direct them in the filming of their movie, necessary for earning the badge. Sure, it was a lot of fun returning to my boy scout roots and spending a day chasing teenagers through the forest with a camera in hand, dousing them with fake blood, as well as a number of creative ideas. I also worked with them to get the film edited.

So there.. 8 big projects in 2 months. Anyone wondering why I have grossly neglected my blog, Facebook postings, and e-mails? There you go! Now it's time to enjoy my summer.. oh wait.. I have more to edit! And since I have no shortage of work to be done, anyone guess what I proposed to Little Calvin as something that might be fun to do this summer? Yup.. video production! Every day! For his blog we are doing a video diary of "almost" every day of his summer vacation, requiring nightly editing sessions together. So far we've made our own episode of Wipeout, survived the death of his beloved first pet, and had fun coming up with new ways to present each day. You can see the episodes here, and remember we are attempting to post each week day, so check back frequently.

So that's the latest from the Calvin household. Now that the "strict deadline" projects have been completed I will be able to return to more regular updates, Growing Up Calvin features and crazy family stories and adventures.

Now, I can finally scratch "update blog" off the "to do" list... Back to the video editing..

"Last Week" Trailer Released

Just a quick note today...

You read about my crazy week filming my latest documentary in my previous post, but now I am releasing the trailer for the film. Traditionally, the film is completed FIRST, then a trailer produced, but in order to take advantage of a marketing opportunity, I had to switch those around for this one. So, it may be a bit early, but at least you will be able to get a visual look at my week and the film yet to come. Enjoy!

Telling the Story.. Regardless

Two years ago, I was sitting in a middle school gym, watching my daughter performing in her choir concert. This was a special occasion. Her choir teacher had been teaching choir at the school for the past 30 years and was now getting ready to retire. This was his final performance of his long career. As I watched this whole event unfold, with tears, with flowers, with standing ovations and many hugs, I wondered what it must feel like for him. Was he relieved it was all over? Was he sad to see it all go? He had obviously made a huge difference in the lives of thousands of students.. but what kind of things were going through his head as he had prepared that week for his last show?

The filmmaker in me was very intrigued by this, and as I drove home I thought ahead to my own mother's retirement just two years later in 2009. Her story was similar.. teacher for the last 40 years. She took over the schools speech and debate team in the early nineties and turned it into the most dominating speech program in the state for ten years, with teams of 75 students. She had taken over the drama program, staging elaborate spring musicals each year. But she had done all this with the philosophy of "teach the student, not the subject" that had made her one of the most popular teachers in the high school for years. So that begged the question from me.. what would it feel like for her as she prepared for and performed her final musical of her career? Suddenly I had a story that I felt could make for an interesting and inspiring documentary film and I began to make my travel plans.

And so, last Saturday I flew to Colorado with all my film gear, ready to document the week leading up to this final performance at the high school I had graduated from YEARS ago (returning there after all these years was a bizarre experience in and of itself..) The musical was "The Sound of Music" my mom's all time favorite that she had saved for her final year. The week's schedule was packed filming all the rehearsals and the interaction between the kids as well as driving around the state interviewing former students, friends, colleagues, the cast, everyone that I could track down to give insight into the story.

This whole experience was a bit different for me. In my past sports related films, the typical "emotional" moments came when the key player on the team is injured at the end of the season and the rest of the team must figure out how to pull together to play and win without them. But this story was a very different beast as it had a much more in depth emotional story to go along with it. Most of these kids and teachers had been involved in the random school hostage crisis and the in-school killing of one of their classmates, Emily Keyes, 3 years ago (read about it here). The girl that was killed was one of my Mom's speech students and several of the lead cast members in the play had been the hostages. There was still a lot these people were dealing with from that event, causing some very emotional interviews. I certainly was not used to watching both men and women break down in tears on camera and I left many of the interviews just feeling emotionally exhausted. While that killing was not a HUGE part of the story, it was still an important part that had to be told as my Mom was one of the instrumental people that day, in helping rally the students together to cope, and in pulling the community back together with her speech at the funeral.

So I had my job... I had to document the events of the week.. regardless of how they unfolded. My goal with the project was to be realistic, not some reality show type of story where events are exaggerated to create more drama. I just wanted to tell the story of what my mother had done and the difference she had made. I wanted to visually see what she went through.. the stress, the emotional swings, and the chaos that has made the final week of prep before the spring musical become dubbed "Hell week". I was worried everything would go smoothly and I would be left without a compelling story to tell.. turns out.. I had nothing to fear.

It started first thing Monday morning with a freak snow storm, sending my mom into a panic that school (and her biggest rehearsal of the week) would be canceled.

Luckily all arrived at school, but that rehearsal was so lousy, it about sent my mom over the edge and she doubted this play would come together on time.

Then there was the truly wacky, unexpected events of the week... the two kids that attempted (for whatever reason) to crawl up into the air ducts above the auditorium (I think they were trying to ditch class) only to have one almost fall through the ceiling, as it gave away under their weight. Luckily, he caught himself and got out, preventing a potential deadly fall to the concrete auditorium floor three stories below. (the poor students who were alarmed watching his leg suddenly come bursting through the ceiling in a crash, were rather upset, however..). Then there was the cast member that was standing between two cars on a sloped driveway. When one of the cars accidently rolled backwards, she was pinned between the two cars, causing quite a bit of damage to her legs making her unable to perform. Soon I had to wonder if every time the phone rang I needed to start filming, as we never knew what to expect next.

Stress and anxiety filled the cast as everyone prepared for opening night. A week's worth of rough rehearsals was weighing heavily and no one knew if they could pull it off. But to their credit, the Thursday night opening show went off without a hitch, leaving everyone excited and ready to do it all over again for the next 2 nights.

By the time Saturday night came along.. I was very pleased with myself. I knew I had the story, now captured on camera, that I had been looking for. I had captured the events of the week, the thoughts of the students and others through their interviews, I had the emotions.. from sheer happiness and pride to the emotional breakdowns of saying goodbyes.. and I had the emotional element from showing how everyone had recovered from the Emily Keyes tragedy. It was a good story and I knew that all I had to do was get the last few shots.. odds and ends of the cast, and the standing ovations and community accolades my mom was sure to receive at the end of the night. And so I set off early to the high school to get all the cameras prepped and in place to film what I needed for the night.

Shortly after I arrived and 90 minutes before show time.. the "call" came in. Saturday afternoon, one of the students from the high school.. one my Mom's speech team members, and very active member of her drama department, had been killed in a head-on car accident on the highway west of the school (news reports here). No one saw this one coming.. no one was prepared for this pain. Suddenly I found myself in an odd spot. My job was to document the events of the week.. regardless of what they might be, and so I quickly grabbed the camera and began to film what was happening, but filming these poor students who I had come to enjoy so much over the past week, as they walked through the door looking confused as to what was going on around them, then hearing the news that their friend was dead, then collapsing in their own grief and sobs.. part of me felt really creepy and uncomfortable and intrusive filming this.

Yet this was what the story had turned into... So I had to. Suddenly this whole, documentary filmmaker role took on a different meaning from what I had experienced in the past. Sure, you want a compelling, emotional story to tell.. but watching people have to suffer and grieve.. just isn't a fun experience. I never thought even for a second that someone would die in the process of my little film!!

Soon, my mom gathered the cast in the auditorium, everyone one of them sobbing almost uncontrollably. The decision had to be made.. go on and perform the final show, or cancel it and reschedule it for another night. Although she feared the backlash from public school parents, she pulled the cast together and offered a prayer, asking for comfort to them and to the family. All the students seemed to want to be a part of it and felt bonded together from the experience. Soon the decision was made to go on with the show, knowing that so many people had traveled a long way to witness that "final show" of my mom's career. They decided to dedicate the play to Kjersti. Her schedule had not allowed her to be in the musical, but she was still a part of the drama department and friends with all the cast, even having been there the previous night to watch the show, and the cast felt it appropriate to go on for her.

By show time, most had found a way to dig deep, to turn off the tears (most just barely) and go on stage and that nights performance turned out.. brilliantly. They all did fantastic in their roles. Even the poor sophomore lead playing the Captain, who had been scared to death to kiss a girl on stage, took the opportunity to "just go for it" to the amazement of the cast!

The school principal even stated afterward that he had never been prouder of a group of kids as this one, to go on with a stellar performance so quickly after getting such shocking news. But a moment I will never forget came at the very end of the show. I don't know who had the idea or how it circulated, but just after the final curtain call, the cast all lined up in the front of the stage, held hands and sang an impromptu acapella version of the song "My favorite things" from the musical.

"When the dogs bite, when the bees sting, when I'm feeling sad. I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel so bad," came their unified voices. Everyone knew what that meant, what they had all been through and overcome, and there wasn't a dry eye in the audience.

And so Sunday morning as I packed up my gear and got on my plane, I knew I suddenly had a story much bigger than I had ever expected. I was completely exhausted and ready to sleep for days. But now it's time to put this all together, to tell the story of my Mom, the effect she has had and one that will adequately honor both Emily and Kjersti.. two students whose lives ended up cut much too short.

It was a fun, insightful, busy, exhausting, emotional week, but having the opportunity to tell this story, regardless of how it all turned out, I feel will be very rewarding. Now.. on to the editing booth...

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Update: Here's a more in-depth article, addressing both the death and the decision to go ahead with the musical performance, even after the cast had just been notified.