Blogocentric Formulations

Video "Thank You" Project

This is the project I've been working on for the last couple weeks:

Thank You, SM & SMs!  [ASR] #1954629 A thank you gift for our fearless leaders! by Jeff

For a long time, I've been trying to think of something different and unique to do to thank The StoryMaster and The StoryMistress for everything they do on the site. As they were planning "Writing.Com Party Central 2024!"  this year, it was readily apparent that our dynamic duo was pulling out all the stops and really working overtime (and then some!) to make sure that all of us had plenty of events and new site features to enjoy. And it got the wheels turning about what we could do for them that would stand out from the usual awardicon, merit badge, cNote, etc. Those things are all great, but seeing how hard SM and SMs worked on Party Central this year made me want to do something REALLY special.

A few years ago, I put together a slideshow for my grandfather's memorial service after he passed away. It was a really simple collection of family photos that I set to music and screened for friends and family who had come to pay their respects. It was a chance to use my film school education and get behind the editing software again... and it turned out really well.

So I decided to do the same thing here, except that I wanted to tie the "family photo" aspect into the site's recent drive to post flyers everywhere. The original request was for Writing.Com members to email me pictures of themselves with a flyer in some kind of pose.

Like all great projects, though, there were some real ups and downs.

The first big disappointment was the initial turnout. I think it was partly due to the fact that we couldn't actually advertise anywhere publicly on the site for fear of the SM and SMs finding out, so without the ability to use forum posts, newsfeeds, and even the group mailing function for a lot of groups, we passed a request around chain letter style, asking people to participate by sending a photo of themselves and/or forwarding the email to other people they thought would want to be involved. (Sorry to those of you who probably received about two dozen emails about this activity... but hey, I guess that just means you're popular! )

Initially, the turnout wasn't great. I knew I'd need about 100 photos to make a respectable-length slideshow, and for a few weeks we were hovering around 20-30 photos. There were a couple of times that I thought we were going to come up way short and not even have enough to assemble a project.

But that's when something really cool happened.

Quick digression... my day job, as many people know, is working in the entertainment industry. My professional experience has been almost entirely in the field of motion picture production (mostly film and television), and one of the things I love most about my job is that it's a collaborative medium. Between the director, the producers, the actors, the writers, the executives, and all the other people involved in the evolution of a project, there exists an enormous opportunity for failure and conflicting vision... but there also exists an opportunity to discover something new and exciting that one person would have never come up with on his or her own. That's naturally at war with my writer side, though, who desperately wants to control every nuance of his work.

With this project, I was trying to be sensitive to the fact that some writers are shy (believe it or not!) and, especially when it comes to their online presence, are very cautious about putting a picture of themselves out there. So I tried to mitigate that fear by suggesting shy writers could obscure their faces by covering them with a flyer, taking the photo from the neck down, etc. I started to get some images in that were fine... and then I started seeing the deviations from my plan.

Some people started sending in pictures of themselves without the flyer at all. Others sent in pictures of their computer screens, or hand-made signs, or pictures of their books or the published work of other authors on the site that they had purchased. And my first thought (self-admitted control freak, remember) was, "No no no no no no... this is not the plan at all! It's all wrong!"

But as more of them came in, I realized that what I had in all these photos was so much better than what I had originally envisioned. All the flyer pictures were great, but so were the additions and alternate stuff other people had sent in. Everything together ultimately contributed to a slideshow that wasn't just a stale repetition of similar flyer pic after similar flyer pic, but a dynamic slideshow that helped showcase the creativity and diversity that makes this site and its members so wonderful.

Ultimately, the video we made was truly a collaboration on the part of every person who took the time to send in a photo, and the slideshow as a whole is a better product for it. I'd like to specifically recognize both GabriellaR45 and Fi who helped me pound the pavement and offered great incentives to get people to send in their photos when we were coming up short... and to Tornado Dodger who was my sounding board, my voice of reason, and my encouragement, particularly over the last few nights when I was logging ungodly hours in the editing room after long days at work, when I needed a fresh perspective to make sure I didn't lose my mind in the tiny details. This project wouldn't be what it is without those individuals, or without any of the people who took time to send a photo, pass around the email, or otherwise lent their support to getting this project done as under-the-radar as possible. Which is no small feat when the subjects of your surprise run and oversee the entire site!

Some of the best movies I've worked on came about not because of the auteur-like vision of a single person, but rather through the collective effort of lots of people with the same goal of creating the best product they possibly can. Our goal was doing something special for SM and SMs to show them how much we care about them and this site they've created. And I think, hopefully, that we succeeded together.

Thanks again to everyone who helped make this project possible!