Heroes

"It's the Heroes among us that keep the Y strong."



Every year, for the past three, I have been tasked with shooting/editing the final video (2-3minutes) at our YMCA Annual Dinner meeting. Each year I manage to do this and each year I have to try to outdo the previous one. This is an overwhelming project, but I always enjoy the challenge. I figured I would make a post describing how this year's video came together (in just under a week!)

Each Annual Dinner has a theme, in 2011 it we started focusing more on Members and their stories. In 2012 the theme was Magical Moments and in 2013 our theme was Heroes Among Us, recognizing the staff, volunteers, members and community partners who enable us to do what we do every day.

It started with research, which I began awhile back. I checked out other YMCAs on YouTube for what looks like interesting or creative concepts in video. It didn't take long until I stumbled on YMCA Canada's Public Service Announcement style, campaign, about "Nurturing Potential." http://ymcapotential.ca/ and I knew right away the direction I wanted to take.




I knew I wanted to move away (far away!) from type on a screen, particularly the number we serve, ("Over 250,000...") since is has been that way for the two previous videos. I wanted to create a more PSA oriented, feel-good piece on the overall message of impact we have.

Sue Fay, our writer for the Annual Report was to write the script for the video as well. I had told her my thoughts (slower paced, PSA, Voiceover) and linked her to the above PSA, but she was slammed with just getting the Annual Report done.

It was getting seriously close to the date, so I decided to write the script myself one morning—sketching it out first thing in the morning at work after visualizing it on my drive in. (**As if this wasn't enough, Coastal VA got slammed with an enormous snow storm; 8-10"—the most we've seen in decades, putting the entire region on shutdown for 2 full days).

I had the introduction ("They wake up in the morning... people just like us") and the closing ("..in his Eyes, Her Mind and Our Hearts ... you're a hero") but the middle portion needed some serious work, as far as the language. While I knew what I wanted it to convey, I knew I had to get the mood right and the tone so it wasn't too corny! So the end result benefited largely from Sue's help.

I shot the opening shots at my neighbors house one week from the Annual Dinner. I worked through the weekend at YMCAs getting as many shots as I could visualize from a roughly sketched "shot list"—and really just resorting to video-portraits when I couldn't seem to stage the shots I really wanted.

The voice over was Andrew Cronin, a long time friend from college. He nailed it in like three styles. I chose "Jim Bob Lite" (folksy, friendly) —we made this up... but yeah, less dramatic more friendly. This saved us $1500 at least. Voice over talent is expensive!!

All in all, I am proud of the final result but I think more time would have made this piece truly awesome. A video never really feels done. On any of the big ones I have ever worked on, I end up tweaking it right up until the deadline. As soon as I finished this one I had all kinds of ideas on how I could have made it better. I feel like it started strong but I quickly fell into a montage of Y moments, instead of sticking to the script. Thankfully, some of the more touching lines at the end helped me pick it back up ending with the shots of cute kids, creating the inspirational shots that a video about Heroes needs.

That's all, just figured I would put all this down somewhere and have it written.