2007
I first worked at Heritage from 1999-2003. During those five years, at the closing banquet, there was never a closing staff slideshow (many other things were different, but that is not for this post). When I returned in 2007, there had been (I think) two previous years with slideshows (created in PowerPoint), and I loved the idea. I offered to put it together, and Kevin agreed to let me do it.
I ended up spending an entire Saturday in the newly-opened Panera in Uniontown (and countless late nights in Keystone and my house) coding the slideshow in Flash. Sadly, this video will most likely never be able to exported, making it truly a one-off performance, it only worked correctly when on full-screen mode on my old laptop, which now has a keyboard which doesn’t work, making it impossible to log-in.
“Love and Memories” was actually the centerpiece of my final project in my campaigns class in college (I used it for Kellogg’s), and O.A.R. was a favorite band of Kevin. To say I was sick of this song by the time the summer was over was an understatement. But the sentiment is right, and it was a good song to open with.
“Pirates” is a fantastic piece of music, along with it’s companion, “Mermaids.” They, along with other music from the album were used in a Clorox campaign, and there was such an outcry to be able to purchase the music that a charity album was created, the proceeds going to musical education charities. It’s a short song, and that piece was the Central section of the video, before moving onto what I would come to call “mishmash.”
After going through each of the camps, the final section, where everyone is mixed together is called “mishmash.” The sentiment would be emphasized more in the future, but we work as one camping and outdoor program staff, and what I saw when I returned in 2007 was that more than ever, the camps worked in concert with each other.
Home is a theme that you will see repeated often, for obvious reasons. Those who have worked on camp staff know how it transforms into your home, keeping you and your newly adopted family close. “Home” fit the bill for this section. This part was heavily edited by Kevin, including graphics for the first (and last) time, including an inside joke to the “garden variety thundershowers,” “dirty bird” (chicken sandwiches) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows novel.
I’m particularly proud of the video design at 3:07-3:14 of the song, each of the three camps’ logos quickly flashed and expanded on the screen, morphing into the HR acorn as the song reached its climax.
This would be the last (and of course, first) year I would hand-code the slideshow, a start-up called Animoto arrived on the scene and I moved production to their software, which in turn, allowed us to offer commemorative DVDs for sale and promotional videos, although those would come later.
Next us, 2008, the first Animoto.
