For the past three years I’ve done a promotional video for Ockanickon, initially to fill a gap when an offer to film one by some third party fell through and I volunteered to do one on condition that someone else provide the raw material. This year I received 3800 pictures from the photography crew at camp, more than I received in any other year and coupled with my new SSD I was looking to make short work of the promo. I quickly encountered difficulties:
- 1200 shots were simply out of focus.
- 800 were improperly illuminated. My favorite being those of night activities where the flash caught only a single white object like a shoe or volleyball in the dead stillness of night.
- 700 depict a single child staring at something, completely bored, or with an indeterminate activity involving a book or pencil.
- 600 involved volleyball, the volleyball tournament, or sitting around Totem lodge.
- Golf, horseback riding, rafting, law, dining hall program, the health lodge, mountain biking, CPR and all other leader training had no pictures taken of them at all.
- Ecology only had pictures of people washing their hands.
- Eagle only had pictures of kids staring into the distance or doing a dog pile.
- Handicraft had 4 pictures, but they were quite nice.
I faked a picture of mountain biking by doing a ridiculous crop + rotation on a guy passing by Neshaminy camp site. Also, I found a wonderful picture of adults engaged in a whipped cream eating contest where if you rotate it and crop out the kids it looks like a group of village elders climbing a glacier with their beards.
I reduced the pool to about 140 usable images that met my requirements and made a video.
Next year I’m either going to provide a shot list or stage everything after the fact at my house.