We're past the midway point in the high school football regular season, which means I'm overdue to share all the stories I've done so far for Football Friday on WRAL. To watch a playlist of all them, simply click here. Week 1 is always where you want to get out of the gate strong. Thankfully, I had some help. 1) My first game at Nash Central was a blowout, which always makes the day easier. 2) My second game included a few deep passes right to me. Oh, and I should mention a few of us have a bit of a running bet on how many WWE references we can work in. I get that out of the way early. A beach vacation and then bad weather kept me off the field for the next two weeks, and I certainly showed my rust on a deep TD pass in my first game between Wake Forest and Leesville Road. Normally, I edit around it to make myself not look stupid. But at this point, it's more fun to make the mistake something more fun a viewer will remember. In my second game, I realized how long I've been out of the Triangle sports loop because I had no idea Torry Holt and Willie Parker were assistant coaches for Dewayne Washington at Heritage High now. Make sure you watch this catch at the end of the highlights, too. The next week was a little tricky because we thought both my games were 7pm kickoffs, but it turned out my first game at Southern Durham started closer to 7:30. That meant I could only stay so long in order to get to my second game at Durham Riverside in time to get enough meaningful highlights there. Fortunately, the Orange High running back in that second game recognized me and knew to run right at the camera after scoring his last touchdown, which made the atmosphere seem more exciting than it actually was. Again, my rule of thumb is at the very least, make what you're doing memorable to the viewer. We've all seen thousands of highlights of guys scoring touchdowns. While that's all good and it makes the night easier, sometimes it's the lack of highlights that make me have to get more creative. Or in the case of my first game at Durham Jordan, much more sarcastic. But hey, my lack of good highlights was memorable, wasn't it? Remember how I said blowouts make the night easier? It will never get any easier than last Friday. First, I had the "Football Friday Showdown", which is basically our game of the week. Clearly, it was a weaker slate of games because the game of the week between old rivals Wallace-Rose Hill and Midway was a shellacking. I could have left after the first quarter and had all the highlights I needed if I wanted to, but then I would have been sitting at the station with my story all edited while still waiting for a final score for 30 minutes. So I stayed for the first half, edited my story and was in home in Holly Springs by 10:45pm.
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The unpredictable road of life is one my family and I travel with the pedal down to the floor and with several unexpected detours. The last five years has taken us from Raleigh to Tampa to Knoxville and back to Raleigh and included our wedding, our baby boy and several job changes. Now that we have moved to our new house in Holly Springs two months ago, we plan on doing the old "settling down" that most people in their mid-30s have already started years before. But best laid plans, and whatnot. Meantime, I've enjoyed returning to WRAL for my part-time work shooting/editing high school football stories for Football Friday and producing the Logan Zone. More on all that in a post next week. Earlier, I finished up a few projects I had already agreed to shoot in Knoxville before we left town. The most recent one was a wedding I drove back for in early August for Susie and Sebastian Clerge. Here is the highlight video. The venues for the wedding and the reception were both gorgeous: Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville and the Tellico Village Yacht Club in Loudon, TN. The event was an incredible melting pot of cultures too because Susie's family is Palestinian and Sebastian is Hatian. As you can see from the video, we tried something different with the bride and groom reading the letters they had received from each other. It obviously led to some emotional moments for Sebastian. Neither I or the ones reading the letters had seen them before we shot those scenes. I probably leaned on less video from the actual ceremony in the highlight video than I usually do because—even though the venue was beautiful—the access on where you can shoot an indoor church wedding lessens the variety of shots available. I think it still worked, especially with the cool video of the bride and groom on the boat before the reception! Three weeks before that, I shot a quinceanera right before we moved to NC. What an experience! I had never been to one before. I suppose the best description of a quinceanera would be that it's like a Latin American bat mitzvah. It's a church service and a party celebrating when a girl turns 15. The family and the event planner asked that I do mainly raw video for this event so it's a lot longer and not nearly as flashy as the wedding highlight video: Do yourself a favor and scroll to the 58-minute mark and beyond for some of the choreographed dance numbers to get a feel for how much time (and money) goes into these parties.
As you can probably tell, the ceremony was also held at Sacred Heart Cathedral and the after-party was at The Barn Event Center in Townsend, TN. Cool place! Special thanks to event planner Esther Johnson for hiring me for both the quinceanera and the wedding! I'll always be willing to travel back to the area to shoot more events like those. I've often said shooting weddings are like shooting sports. You only have one chance to get the shot, but enough experience around these events will help put you in the right position.
Earlier this month, the sports world and wedding shooting world collided for me at the wedding of Cade and Lauren Holliday. Why? Because football fans might be familiar with Cade's father, Doc, who is the head coach at Marshall and was an assistant for a national title team at Florida and was at NC State during the early Chuck Amato years before that. The wedding actually took place in Raleigh at the historic Merrimon-Wynne House, which is a gorgeous venue (I booked the gig thanks to an old high school friend, who was a bridesmaid.). The father-son connections didn't stop there either. Thanks to the handy location of the wedding being by my old stomping grounds, this was the first wedding I had the chance to shoot with my dad, Jay! When you have a gajillion-time Emmy winner as your second videographer, it's hard to screw things up, as hopefully is evident in the highlight video above. But as the saying from the old Ginsu Knives commercial went, "But wait, there's more!" This won't be the last work I do in Raleigh. Not by a long shot. Because I'm moving back there in two weeks! My wife, Martha, will be taking the Managing Editor position at WRAL, which is the same station where we both used to work and where we met almost ten years ago. As for me, WRAL has been gracious enough to offer me some work doing what I used to do: SPORTS! (See how I brought it all back full circle?) This football season, I'll be producing the Logan Zone hosted by former ECU football coach Steve Logan and 99.9 The Fan's Adam Gold. As Bart Scott would say, "Can't wait!" Adam is an extremely nice guy and his talent speaks for itself. I've only spoken to Coach Logan a few times, but the man's two greatest loves seem to be blues music and red wine so we'll have plenty to talk about. In addition to the Logan Zone, I get to shoot/report high school football games again for Football Friday. Anyone who knows me as an employee knows this has always been the most rewarding gig for me. I basically learned how to do this TV thing from tagging along with my dad when he worked on the show in the 1990s. There may be some opportunities beyond this at WRAL, but we'll just play it out and see where this goes. Maybe you'll see me on the sidelines at the occasional Duke, UNC or NC State game. But for now, I'll continue to freelance. I actually have another wedding and a quinceanera(!) to shoot in Knoxville, and I definitely plan to keep doing that in Raleigh! So if you know anyone getting married, or have any other events that need to be shot or edited, I'd love to help! Hopefully it will be as fun as this last wedding. My busy week with Bike Elf finished with a shoot in Sevierville, TN where the charity challenged the local Boys & Girls Club to earn bikes with a fitness challenge. This is unique for Bike Elf because it's the 1) first time they have partnered with a group in Sevier County and 2) this is their first time Bike Elf has used physical fitness as incentive to earn bikes. All their previous challenges have been based on academics.
By now, I'm starting to get the routine down for shooting these challenges. The key is to make the videos different from before. I thought the music I found for this one gave it a fun vibe. The Bike Elf shoots will calm down a bit this summer. But exciting things are on the way! I'll explain more soon... The good folks at Bike Elf are keeping me busy this week, with three shoots in an eight-day span.
The stretch of shoots started yesterday in Maryville, TN at the Boys & Girls Club, where Bike Elf is challenging the roughly 200 kids in the Brain Gain summer academic program. The top 25 finishers will earn a bike, helmet and lock from Bike Elf! This was a fun shoot because I'm starting to get the handle on how these events are structured. Basically, I mic'd up the main speaker, Leigh Wilson for the early part of the presentation. Then I roamed around with my Canon 70D and left a GoPro Session on the platform behind her. After a little b-roll of the kids getting measured and a pair of interviews, it was an easy story to tell. Monday's shoot could be interesting because I'll likely have to bring my son Jackson with me, who will be turning 10 weeks old that day. Here's the look he'll give me when I tell him he has to come with. What do I love doing most? Telling stories, especially feel-good feature stories.
It's one of the main reasons I love shooting for Bike Elf. Recently, the founders pitched an idea that should play to my storytelling strengths. Why not pick out a few of the people who make Bike Elf great—whether it be bike recipients, volunteers, donors—and tell their stories as part of a series? And voila, "Bike Elf Stories" was born. The series begins today with the Tucker brothers: Phillip and Josiah. It's a standard story of how kids have to earn their bicycles from Bike Elf. The bikes aren't simply handed to them. Expect to see more stories every few weeks. Some will simply be a series of photos and others will be more like the Tuckers' feature, with interviews and more in-depth shoots. This was a fun first. I've used my GoPro Hero4 Session in several situation where it would go under water. But under a beer? Sure, why not?
Last week, I shot Bike Elf's Pints for a Purpose event where the charity raised money from raffles and beer sales. It was a pretty straightforward shoot. I had very little available time to edit the video so it lacks a lot of the color corrections I like I normally do. My main goal was to make it move and flow, which isn't easy to do when you have what we referred to in journalism school as "BOPSA": bunch of people standing around. However, I'll remember this video mainly for the opening shot. I placed my GoPro at the bottom of a beer mug for bartender to pour a frothy IPA over and it got the exact shot I wanted. So of course, I had to open with it. I'm proud to say the video I produced for Bike Elf for the Selective Insurance #thinkBIG video contest finished in 3rd place! As a result, the charity earned a $1,000 reward which it will use toward refurbishing more bicycles for deserving children. As a reminder, the goal of the contest was to produce a one-minute video featuring the founders of the small business/charity explaining why they think their small business is a big deal. By my count, 82 videos were submitted. The ten videos that received the most votes by the public advanced to the final round, which was then judged by a panel of voters affiliated with Selective. Bike Elf received the third most votes (more than 4,000 of the 59,000 votes cast). Thanks so much to those who voted! We could not have done it without you! And one more time, here is the contest entry: Long time, no post. There's a reason for that. Say "hello" to the newest member of our family: Jackson Edward Jennings! Jackson says, "Hello." He was born March 27 at 4:38am and has been a blessing ever since! But while work has slowed, it hasn't stopped. In the meantime, I shot and edited a video for Bike Elf that we entered for the Selective Insurance video contest. The purpose of the contest was make a one-minute video that highlights the founders of a small business or charity and explains why they think their business is a big deal. I can explain to you why we think Bike Elf is a big deal, or you can just watch the video. Please take a few seconds to VOTE FOR THIS VIDEO!
All you need to do is CLICK ON THIS LINK, THEN CLICK ON THE "HEART" ICON, AND YOU'RE DONE! Voting lasts through May 7th, and you can vote once per day (from separate devices, too). The grand prize is $5,000, and this money will go to refurbish bikes to give to kids who otherwise wouldn't have the means to acquire one. It's a great cause! Please help! As my wife and I are two weeks away from the due date of our first baby boy, some other happy news to report: I'll be taking on much more work with Bike Elf! So, be prepared to see many more videos from me about this wonderful charity. In addition to producing videos on each of their events, we'll be rolling out a new series called "Bike Elf Stories", which will feature different people positively affected by Bike Elf: recipients, donors, volunteers, etc. Also, I'll be assisting them on the marketing and social media side, too. It's all extremely rewarding! This past Saturday, Bike Elf held one of its Work Days where they accept donated bikes at the Boys & Girls Club in Maryville, TN, while repairing and cleaning bikes upstairs so they're ready to give to kids who have earned them through incentive-based academic and athletic programs. The video above is a quick look at the highlights of the day and all the volunteers accomplished. I tried to turn this one ASAP so there aren't many effects and color corrections to the video I shot on my Canon 70D. Most of the heavy lifting was done on Adobe After Effects to create the basic graphics to show the stats of the day. These days, you want to make videos people will understand with the sound off because more than 90% of Facebook videos I post are watched on mute. For a longer, behind-the-scenes introduction to all the people involved, check out the Facebook Live we did during the day. Due to an unfortunate injury in the family to the main still photographer Bike Elf uses, I worked double duty and snapped a few pics on Saturday, too. Nothing too special. Just running and gunning and trying to keep it all in frame. And as always, you can go to Bike-Elf.org to DONATE and VOLUNTEER!
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AuthorJason Jennings is a freelance videographer based in Raleigh, NC. He previously spent more than a decade covering sports for television stations in Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Missouri. Archives
December 2018
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