“Ensemble” for the College of Arts & Lettersfeatured

As a follow-up to “Rise and Shine,” the promotional video I wrote and produced for Missouri State’s College of Arts and Letters, I wrote and produced a piece highlighting the music department.

Check it out:

Concept

This concept began with a simple thought:

Walking through the music building is an enchanting sensory experience. You’re inundated with the sounds of people rehearsing, performing, practicing — just doing their thing. I find it totally charming and unlike any other experience on campus.

I wanted to recreate this experience in a narrative video format. Instead of hearing a bunch of different music, I scripted a walk through the building that featured the same piece of music interpreted in a number of different ways.

Luckily, the leadership on this project was amazing. Dr. Shawn Wahl, dean of the College of Arts & Letters, and Dr. Julie Combs, music department head, instinctively got the concept. They thought it was cool, too, and they encouraged me to go for it.

Execution

This was a cool concept, yes. But a tricky one. As a producer, I tend to be very practical, and I rarely get behind an idea that’s as execution dependent as this one.

Still, it felt like a “go big or go home” moment, which meant we needed an exceptional production team.

We partnered with Springfield-based production company Locke + Stache. These guys work beautifully together, and they’re equally great individually.

Just one thing about each of them that made this project work:

• Austin Elliott served as camera op. And since the video was scripted to mimic a one-take journey through the building, this meant wearing a camera rig throughout a highly reflective building, next to a bunch of highly reflective pianos. Carrying it while walking on a set musical tempo—often up steps or inclines.
• Chris Olson brought some amazing camera skills, too. Perhaps most notably when he scored a hugely cinematic drone shot despite 35-mile-per-hour winds .
• Josh Pfaff happily dove into every are-you-kidding-me-level challenge of this script and came up with story-based filming and editing solutions. Things other people would have dismissed outright, he just took as opportunities to be creative.
• Logan Triplett is such a smart editor. I gave him essentially no time to finish this, and he came through beautifully.

We also had an unbelievable audio team.

• James Styron recorded and mastered the musical tracks, which are central to the video’s narrative and emotional powers. When you throw in the fact that I gave him ambitious-to-the-point-of-being-mythical time constraints, it’s truly amazing. When you add the fact that he stayed positive the whole time, it’s unbelievable.
• Colton Jackson recorded sound on location and designed and mixed the final audio track. He brought such intention and specificity to these roles, and his work breathes so much life into the spaces on film. It’s a really lovely example of audio storytelling.

And a little more about the people who rounded out the team.

• Jacqueline Crawford, our first assistant director, made our demanding filming schedule happen. She kept us on track while somehow managing to be nice about it. And she has an uncanny ability to know what I’m worried about so I don’t even have to say it out loud.
• Andrew Trice was exactly where he needed to be at every moment. Most of the time this meant backing up Austin on camera, but it also meant contributing to lighting and even jumping into scenes when we were short on background talent.
• Barb Jones provided such positivity and support. I like to call it “the Barb Jones Experience.”
• And that beautiful color grading? Brian Singler did it, and it’s a significant part of the reason people keep asking me if we filmed this in one take.

I have to mention a few others, too. John Prescott, Kyle Aho and Faith Morgan composed and/or arranged the music. And Baylor Barnes, who acted the lead role, kept momentum going with all that intentional, on-tempo, yet unself-conscious walking.

There’s a whole list of others who contributed to this project as well. I’d love for you to read about them. Every single one of them helped bring this cool concept to life.

A remarkable ensemble indeed.