Behind The Scenes: You Belong

  Tuesday, November 29, 2016 2:00 AM
  News

Pittsburg, KS

It all started with planning and scene scouting. To showcase various aspects of campus, you have to physically scout locations during specific times of the day to see how they’ll translate visually. Occasionally, inspiration comes from other forms of media. In this case, one of Malcolm Turner’s early morning images gave the team a great foundation for the intro scene. The vision was to have students walking on the famous Gorilla Walk with the early morning sun peeking over the trees. This would also be the framework for most of the footage.

After meeting around 6 a.m. before the sunrise, the team got all the equipment set up and in place. However, the early morning clouds took over the skyline and blocked the sun, eliminating the exact shot we’re were looking for. As we often do in broadcasting and video production, we had to be flexible. We had to work with what Mother Nature was providing. Our idea was to create a fake sunlight on the lens to make up for the lack of actual sun. The shot at the very beginning of the piece is what we came up with. Ultimately the real sun would have been best, but with quick thinking we feel the shot turned out really well.

A big part of this video production is the voice over that accompanies the visual story. The students you see were kind enough to also help with this part of the production. We wanted to have students, not hired professionals, read the lines. We believe it’s more genuine and translates better overall. This image was taken just before we had our students read the script in the Creative Media Studio.

We actually recorded the lines only twice for what you hear on the finished production. Ultimately, we were very happy with the results and believe we’ll utilize this type of voice talent on future projects. We joked with several of the students that they should go into voice over work if their actual field of study doesn’t work out. They did an amazing job, and this piece wouldn’t be what it is without their support and energy!

After our first voice over session, we scheduled another filming session in the Oval. It’s one of Pitt State’s most iconic areas on campus, and we wanted to showcase it in some way. Again, the idea was to utilize the early morning sunrise to create a visually warm and nostalgic feeling. This would also help keep some consistency throughout the piece. Like our previous early morning outing it was really cold, but the sun was perfectly shining in the area we needed lit. (Funny side note, we ended up not using some of the footage from this session simply because the student's breath was visibly noticeable. We didn’t want the scene to appear cold, or more awkwardly, as if the student was smoking. We are a tobacco-free campus, after all. Seems weird, but this was our thought during the editing phase. Here’s to being completely transparent and truly bringing you a “behind the scenes” feature.)

Here’s one of the mentioned scenes that we filmed but later decided against in post-production.

Footage of a single student walking on campus was later used to reinforce the “...the moment you step on campus” voice over. We used a clip from behind the student to portray her walking forward and entering campus.

The same day we met up with a student cadet at the Veterans Memorial Amphitheater, which is located on the campus of Pitt State. We wanted to showcase our ROTC program, and the line that reads, “to make a difference.”  We thought the visuals and scipt matched very well.  We had to work with contrasting perspectives and angles with the shot we had planned. We wanted a salute between two individuals and the Memorial behind them.

In order to line up the three elements in the shot, we worked with Enrollment Officer Josh Shay, who found several reams of paper for the cadet to stand on.

To accommodate the “every day we challenge ourselves to achieve more” line, we used the promising field of Polymer Chemistry. Inspired by another photo taken by Malcolm Turner, Jacob had a polymer student looking through some super amazingly awesome polymer machine/contraption. The professor who helped with a few scenes described this tool to us, but honestly… it’s fairly complicated to someone who doesn’t know this field of interest. Therefore we don’t specifically remember its brilliance. However, we do know our students are extremely fortunate to work with and train on this machine. It’s a big deal. We thought it looked really cool, so it needed to be showcased. The video clip we used is looking straight through the glass at this student while he works to make a big research discovery.

For the line, “everyone wants to stand out…without standing apart,” we planned footage of our female student within the Kansas Technology Center’s automotive lab.

We had Automotive Technology Instructor Nico Prelogar instruct each student in some of the different areas around the automotive lab. Our thought: sparks are sweet.

During this footage, Nico was also keeping a close eye on his own students, as the production was during his class hours. His class was utilizing the same automotive lab that we were filming in, so he definitely gets an award for doing multiple tasks at the same time. He never missed a beat or question from the students in each function.

Andy Grotheer even helped snap an image of both Sam and Jacob as they worked to create a morning sun effect.

Special Thanks to: 

Jamera Allen
Juliana Cook
Andy Grotheer
Nick Wuthnow
Savannah Mitchell
Kenneth Hutchison
Rae Zeller
Dr. Tim Dawsey
Nico Prelogar
Josh Shay