Video Production

After countless tux rentals, countless entry fees and countless disappointing losses, PlattForm finally scored the elusive Emmy award Saturday night for our pro-bono work. I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen. So like any good optimist, I told everyone we were going to win. I willed it to happen. Well, that and the judging panel finally came to their senses.

Nothing is worse than losing when you’re oh-so sure you’re going to win. You’ve mentally prepared yourself and you’ve rehearsed your speech ad nausea. And then you lose and you still have to smile and politely clap. You’re forced to sit through 84 more categories while you are served coffee and dessert. Usually, I’m so disgruntled I’ll eat six or seven desserts.

On Saturday, all the planets were aligned. Every single nominee at our table walked away with their respective award. And my boss, who had never won an Emmy, was absolutely over the moon. We decided he would give the acceptance speech 1) because he had never done it before and 2) because he’s my boss and told me he was giving it regardless. I was thrilled for him.

The video was for SAVE, Inc. — a local Kansas City charity that does housing options for men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS. It was the third video we’ve produced for them. Each of them had garnered nominations – so we were bound to win sooner or later. (Apparently later than sooner.) The Executive Director of the organization was on hand last night to accept the award with us … which was even more gratifying. You can watch the video here: http://creative.plattformad.com/tvFlash.php?id=8#creative

All in all, it was a great night. And it was great to see us finally bring home the gold for SAVE, Inc. They do such phenomenal things in the community with such limited resources. It’s been a privilege helping PlattForm work hand in hand with them for the last five years.

PlattForm is a very civic-minded company. They give all of their employees the chance to get out and about in the community and make a difference. It’s both a blessing and a perk.

Every year my team in the Video Production department puts together a pro-bono video for a local charity. The first video we produced five years ago was for a local organization that provides housing options for men, women and families affected by HIV/AIDS. To date, the video has raised nearly $900,000 for the charity, SAVE Inc. Over the years, PForm has wrapped its arms around this organization … and it’s been fun for us to watch them grown alongside us.

Over the weekend, we shot our fifth charity video in as many years. It was for the local Kansas City chapter of The Ronald McDonald House. It’s an amazing charity that was founded back in 1972 to help parents with gravely ill children. Now there are Ronald McDonald Houses worldwide … providing a home away from home for families who have children in need of critical medical care.

We spent a majority of the day in the neo-natal intensive care unit at Children’s Mercy Hospital. We were interviewing parents with kids who were clinging to life. Mercifully, most were being nursed back to health. Yes, it was better living through chemistry, technology and the sheer love of their parents. A lot of the moms and dads were teetering on the brink of tears through most of the interviews. It’s never my intention to make people cry while I’m talking to them … but you could tell the waterworks could start at any minute.

At any given point the Kansas City branch of the RMH houses upwards of 50-60 families who have kids in the hospital or receiving medical treatment. Parent after parent mentioned the same thing … we don’t know what we’d do without this place. Most of the families were from smaller or rural towns. Traveling hours to visit their sick kids is not realistic or practical. Heck, most parents refused to leave the hospital room. How convenient to have the Ronald McDonald House less than five minutes away from Children’s Mercy.

The experience was definitely and eye-opener. I’ve never had full access to shoot in a hospital … let alone an intensive care unit. But every one was very candid and honest and wanted nothing more than to tell us how much the Ronald McDonald House meant to them and their families. Keep an eye out for the video as we’ll be unveiling it later this year!

12 Hour Videos Offer a Platform for Fresh Faces and Different Roles

Before the production began, no one who knew Adam Castle envisioned him as a grisly-voiced, face-contorting FBI bad ass. But now it’s hard to see him any other way.
The soft-spoken marketing consultant for Beauty Schools Marketing Group competed in this year’s 12 Hour Video Contest. With his performance in the winning video, 24, he crafted a new persona as comedic actor with a striking impersonation of hard-as-nails cop from television, Jack Bauer.
Castle’s experience exemplifies the magic of 12 hour videos. In the upside-down world of employee self-made video making, the unexpected is the expected … and the expected is as edgy as company videos should ever be allowed.
12 hour video teams consisted of 8 to 16 employees, including a camera person, an editor and a production assistant/grip/writer-editor. Each team was allotted 12 hours to write, shoot and edit a video that follows a given theme. This year, the themes were: Fear, Revenge, Joy and Anger. Beginning at 3 p.m., the teams were allowed to film until midnight on Fridays and then come back to edit the material into a cohesive production on Monday morning.
What happens behind the scenes of a 12 hour video is not unlike what happens when the camera is rolling. The silliness and the camaraderie that spills out when topics are being brainstormed and loose scripts are being developed often makes the transfer to the scenes that are filmed. And, that is the magic of the process. Contributors who take a leadership role in the group are often at the forefront of the shooting process.
In a company-wide vote, employees made 24 by far and away this year’s winning video, which earned it a showing at PlattForm’s annual meeting. Given his unexpected stardom, Castle said the experience wasn’t too of course from what he had envisioned.
“My 12 hours video was basically what I expected,” Castle said. “I was expecting that we would be working on the video until midnight, but we had a pretty defined idea, so we were able to finish up early. Our team didn’t drink as much beer as we thought we would either … it makes me wonder what that says about my expectations of Plattformers? Just kidding … kind of.”
The 12 Hour Video experience was the same across the country as PlattForm’s New York office got in on the act. Jason Penta, who worked behind the camera channeling what he called his “best inner-Spielberg,” helped create the visuals for “Land of Confusion.”
“We definitely all brain-stormed together as a group,” Penta said. “Everyone had great, creative ideas. And of course, everyone was willing to ham it up for the camera. It was also the day of our First Friday/Cinco De Mayo party, so there was a lot of excitement in the office all day. As the margarita count got higher, the video definitely got more interesting.”
Castle said the only other time he ever acted was in ninth grade drama class. He said he had no idea what role I would play in the video before the production began. His teammate, Brandon Gregory, conceived a spoof of the 24 television show starring Keifer Sutherland, and that was all it took.
“Once we had the idea, the whole team was really into it as soon as we started brainstorming,” Castle said.
Castle is the antithesis to the Bauer character, which made it 10 times funnier to see him in the roll.

I held auditions for new talent on Friday.  That’s typically par for the course about two or three times a year.  Rarely, do I ever have a cattle call for actors unless I’m desperate to find new talent for commercials.  That’s what directors/casting people like me do.  People traipse in off the street in … put on a smiley-face … and overact to the point of ad-nausea.  If only everyone could be like that, the world would be a much better place.

I’m just sayin’.

By 9am, the studio was overrun with pretty people rehearsing their lines.  At approximately 9:05 am, I was reaching to grab a script and sneezed.  And promptly threw out my back.  Mind you, this wasn’t just a slight tweak in my lower lumbar.  This was a complete, uncontrollable spasm that made me do a face-plant directly in to the floor.  I folded like a cheap card table.  I dropped like a sack of potatoes.  I collapsed like Enron.  Oh, you get the idea.

You haven’t really lived until you’ve had pretty people come to your rescue.  Some (including my crew) thought I was having a heart attack.  Others thought I had a stroke.  Most, however, assumed I was just another actor practicing for a dramatic reading.  But there I was curled up in the fetal position and poised to black out from the pain at any second.

Okay – maybe it wasn’t quite THAT bad … but when you’re in a room filled with thespians, you typically have to trump their ace.  Somehow I managed to get through the day in semi-debilitating pain.  I’m no fool.  I immediately called a massage therapist and then proceeded to take a few muscle relaxers.  Believe me, those muscle relaxers are so strong even the unattractive actors immediately got better looking.

I love all the things that make me a director.  I love my director’s chair.  I love saying “ACTION!” and “CUT!”  (I don’t wear an ascot or anything, but I’m considering getting one of those bullhorns to carry around with me for posterity.)  But Friday was definitely one of those days where I was humbled by the kindness of strangers.  And after an entire weekend of nursing my back along and catering to its every whim, I’m starting to feel human again.  And, yes, I am replacing my director’s chair with an ergonomic kneeling chair.  Thanks for caring.

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the 2008 Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop in lovely Dayton, Ohio. Good thing … because my job mandates me to write things that are clever and catchy.

I drug my best friend Deirdre along with me because I felt she needed to up her clever and catchy quotient. (To which she responded, “I need to up MY funny factor? How about up YOURS?! And then we died laughing.)

Since I was surrounded all weekend by Pulitzer Prize winners and national columnists (uh, and Deirdre), I figured I’d learn a thing or two. Or three. See, there’s some unwritten Humor Writers’ Law that says funny happens in sets of three. And apparently, it’s mandatory.

Because the world needs to know exactly what I learned, I’ve whittled it down to the facts, just the facts and nothing but the facts. In triplicate.

1) His Royal Majesty, the High-Priest of Humor Garrison Keiler was a guest speaker at dinner one night. He could give a dissertation on Styrofoam and people would fall over laughing. Toward the end of his speech he said, “People who choose to simply write short stories and nothing else … why would anyone live like that?” And he was absolutely right. If people aren’t reading your work … who cares? But if they aren’t reading your work because you’re stuck in a rut … you’re doomed!

2) There is a science behind humor. I’m not kidding. There’s a ratio of jokes to words.
Comedy can be precisely measured. I wish I had been paying more attention here … I was too busy flirting with USA Today’s Craig Wilson to get the skinny on funny. But apparently, I need to throw out any words ending in “ly”. Consequently, I’m royally screwed. Seriously. Oh, and always replace two syllable words with one.

3) Draft down and then draft up. During the first draft … just get it DOWN! Even if there is a plague of locusts, write until you can’t write another word. Pestilence be damned. Then on the second draft … fix it UP! Why? Because writer’s block doesn’t really exist … it’s only information block. Or low blood sugar. (Try telling THAT to my editor. To say he has the attention span of a gnat is being … wait, do you want to go ride bikes?)

Overall, the workshop was both interesting and unsettling. I found I can’t be funny on demand. It’s a craft I’ll have to continue to hone. But it’s nice to know PlattForm takes pride in my craft! Not every company will give you the chance to throw a rubber chicken at a wall to see if it sticks.