In a year when almost everyone and everything has had to adapt, the Hayes Cinematics class and the school’s Air Force Junior ROTC team wanted to make sure one thing stayed the same: the annual Veteran’s Day assembly.
In a normal year, students gather in the auditorium and watch an assembly presented by the cadets in AFJROTC. This year with the new safety precautions and guidelines, that was not able to happen. Senior Master Sergeant Manley and Hayes Cinematics Adviser Tom Hering wanted to keep the tradition alive through a video instead.
“We wanted to give the impression that the viewer’s eye would just be naturally moving to these different moments,” Hering said.
According to Hering, he and the groups included in the video all wanted it to feel like the viewers were still present for a ceremony. The goal was to create some normalcy within the video while incorporating new aspects the viewer would not have had before.
While filming the AFJROTC drill demonstration, the filmmakers moved around the room and to get some of the closer shots an audience member wouldn’t normally see.
“We wanted to capture that energy that might have been lost in a normal performance,” Hering said.
While keeping this same “energy,” the people in the video still had to abide by the safety rules.
“We stayed socially distant, wiped down all materials, and wore masks during the entire filming process,” Manley said.
While producing the video, the groups had to think of different ways to keep the same excitement throughout the video. According to Hering, the film crew listened to the band three different times to try to think of all the different ways that they could show the unique parts of the band.
“The most difficult part about the filming process was trying to get all the hours of footage into this 15 minute video and trying to get all the different dynamic aspects of the performances,” said Wesley Davey, a first year member of Hayes Cinematics.
Yet somehow with all the different challenges and craziness going on, the team still managed to pull together a video not only special for the school but for those who produced it.
“We’re thankful that we had the opportunity to film it because it taught us a lot about what the possibilities are in our filmmaking process this year,” Hering said. “We need people to give us challenges in life so that we can learn more about what we’re capable of.”