Responsible for the video presentation at graduation, recording the parent blssings, arranging someone to video the ceremony and distributing the videos to the graduates, when a copy is available.  The DVDs could be left at the MPE Office to be picked up, or another method of your choice.

Minimum needed:  4 people

1 person to create video, 1 person to record blessings, 2 people to schedule recordings, gather photos, distribute DVDs, etc

Here are the notes from the 2008 A/V team:

2008 Video Committee Report

The Video Committee has 3-4 jobs:

1. Assemble the pre-ceremony slideshow using 5 photos of each graduate.
2. Collect and assemble senior photos to be displayed during the presentation of diplomas. (Typically, the student’s name is superimposed on the photo to be displayed.)
3. Record messages from parents to graduates (“parental blessings”). In years prior to 2007, these messages were all delivered live. In 2007, they were all recorded, and in 2008, some were delivered live and some were recorded.
4. “Hire” a volunteer to videotape the ceremony and arrange for DVD copies to be made and distributed to the families.

Pre-Ceremony Slideshow (Tom Laflin)

At the first meeting of the year, we let families know that we would need 5 photos of each graduate, labeled with the graduate’s name. Families could submit these photos by e-mail or bring hard copies to meetings, where they would be scanned and returned. The deadline for turning in these photos was the March meeting, although we encouraged families to turn them in as soon as possible.

Once the committee decided how the Slide Show presentation was to look, it was a pretty easy task using the following pieces of software:

Video software:  PowerDirector 7 http://www.powerdirectorsoftware.com/

Photo software:  Any software that can crop will do.  There are many of them out there.

DVD software: Arcsoft DVD Slideshow http://www.arcsoft.com/products/dvdslideshow/

Any scanner will do.  I use a Canon LIDE 25.  $50.00 at Nebraska Furniture Mart. Small, compact, and easy to use.

The whole slide show was made up of 60 30-second mini movies.  Each graduate’s photos were imported into the Video software and a title slide was inserted with their name.  Each graduate was asked to provide 4-5 pictures plus a senior photo.  Most did with a few submitting 6 plus a senior photo.  The duration of each picture was determined by the number of photos.  Typically 4-5 seconds.

No soundtrack was made as that would ramp up the complexity.  Music was played over the sound system in the background.

While it sounds great that this should take a committee, it really ended up being a one person task.  I think the logistics of having more than one person doing the scanning and compiling would have been a challenge.

We played the slideshow at the beginning of the April meeting. This gave us an opportunity to catch any mistakes (name spellings, etc.) before graduation.

Recorded blessings/Diploma presentation photos (Darren Cacy)

I recorded the blessings using a computer and a simple microphone I bought for $20 at Radio Shack.  The software I used is called “audacity” and is free, but of course there are many other products which work well, too.

I used PowerPoint to create the slideshow.  For the students with recorded blessings, I embedded the audio onto the slide, and configured it to play when the slide displayed.

Regarding deadlines, I guess it’s up to the person doing the recordings — how much lead time does he/she need….

I put the presentation on a USB flash drive, and Joel Speck (the sound guy at College Church) ran it from there.  When you embed audio into powerpoint, it apparently remembers exactly where the audio file is, and when you play the presentation, it looks in that very spot — the audio is NOT copied into the presentation, but read from the computer’s hard drive.  This means that if the file is in, say, C:\graduation\samantha.mp3, then it has to be in that exact spot to be heard.  Powerpoint will not tell you it can’t find the file; you just won’t hear any audio.

So I created the presentation and audio on the flash drive, which in my computer was the F: drive.  When we inserted the flash drive into Joel’s computer, we had to tell the computer to make it the F: drive, too, so powerpoint could find the audio files.

Recorded/Live Blessings (Patricia Brown, Tami Hernandez)

We allowed 30 seconds per family for the blessings.

Parents signed up indicating which method they planned to use. (Originally, only 14 families signed up for live blessings, but some families ended up delivering them live because they never signed up for a recording time.)

Live blessings had to be written and turned in by the March meeting. Tami timed these and let people know if they needed to be shortened.

Patricia made a schedule for recorded blessings, allotting 5-10 minutes per family. (Initially, the slots were 10 minutes, but it worked fine when we later switched to 5-minute slots.) We scheduled two recording dates — the first one was on the night of a senior meeting (February), and we reserved a different room at Emmanuel Baptist for this purpose. The location for the second group of recordings was a different church. We had one parent checking people in and another parent (Darren Cacy) recording the blessings on his laptop.

Videographer: Zach Salsbury (MPE graduate)

As a committee, we discussed people we knew who might be willing to videotape the ceremony. The job is typically not a paid position, although the videographer usually receives a gift card ($50) from the Appreciation Committee. (It would be good to contact them to make sure of this.)

We budgeted money to rent equipment (optional) and also to duplicate the DVDs. Our equipment rental ended up costing over $300, and the DVD replication cost $2.10 per DVD from Something Different Video Productions at 135th & MurLen in Olathe. (That cost reflects a DVD copy with a black & white label in a CD case.)

Each family receives one DVD at no charge (included in initial graduation fee). The DVDs can not be sold due to copyright concerns.

At the time of this report, we have not distributed the DVDs. We will either locate them at the MPE office for pick-up or mail them to individual families. Other classes have sometimes held a summer picnic where graduates can pick up their DVDs.