When Work is Fun

Most of you know that I’ve been working temporarily at the Baptist Collegiate Ministry (BCM) at USC (the real one). While I’ve been helping out our Communications Team with their responsibilities, I mostly defer the creative fun stuff to the students since we have so many who are talented in video, photography and design. It is a student led ministry after all, and I see my job as more of a guide who provides a safe place for students to try new things and even to fail. I also sign checks and do other things that aren’t as fun, but have to be done. That’s another story though.

However, sometimes the students get bogged down with classes and exams and such and then other times I can’t help myself and I make a few things. One of the most exciting things I’ve been able to work on has been the BCM retreat. It’s the first retreat the BCMers have had in a few years and I was excited to see it work out in the plans to have one. After we developed a theme (The Prodigal Retreat), I started to think of ways to promote it. Since the retreat was something I was already excited about, thoughts and ideas for videos and graphics came fast.

Since I love infographics and since some of the BCMers get a little distracted easily and respond better to images more than lists, I made the following infographic to tell them what to pack on the retreat.

I took Alli and Aaron (both Vis Comm majors) with me to Camp La Vida to make plans for the retreat and shoot some promo material (one of the images I shot is actually the background in the infographic). Here is the first video that we shot. Aaron worked the camera while Alli and I “provided the content.” It’s a rather silly tour of the camp and takes a somewhat humorously dark twist at the end. The three of us sort of came up with the idea on the drive up to La Vida and then worked out the rest as we went. As we started shooting, the project took on a life of its own and we just followed where it took us. Convincing Alli to shoot the last scene took some convincing. She doesn’t like being silly on camera and Aaron and I thought she was going to cry as we told her what we wanted her to do. We reasoned and wore her down and maybe threw in a Jesus juke or two and she finally relented and shot that scene. With the sound effect that I added during post production, it turned out well. It received a good response from the students when we showed it at CrossTraining (the weekly worship service) and I think maybe even Alli was glad that she went through with that scene.

After we shot the silly tour video, we decided to shoot a more serious video to go along with the theme of being a prodigal. This was actually the one that we put more thought and planning into. We decided to shoot with Alli’s DSLR while Aaron acted in this one. After giving my input about the style and content of the video, I didn’t see the need for me be involved in the shoot, so I left Alli and Aaron to it and went off to shoot some stills for promo slides. I took the content that they shot though and edited the footage to make this video.

I also used a couple of the photos to make promo slides for the announcements at CrossTraining and for e-mail blasts that are below.

Oh and after a lot of hard work from a lot of people, the retreat happened last weekend and it turned out well. Here’s a happy little group shot from the weekend.