I made a video for my wife Claire, but when I started she was my fience, and when I came up with the idea we weren’t even engaged yet. My point is the process was quite long. Even before it mattered weather or not I had the idea I had begun filming our life together. I guess this is a product of a lifetime of filming, starting with VHS and ending with digital video. More then anything its a love for capturing moments of my life and recreating them to make people smile, and to keep the memory alive.
Claire and I have been together for over 7 years, and I have footage from every year. Because of the advancement in technology in the last 7 years I’ve been able to save most of the videos I’ve shot on hard drives, the trick has just been tracking them down. I could do a whole other post on the difficulty of keeping all of your media accessible, and even another post on the advancement of digital media and the headache of transferring video into one unified format - that’s for another day.
In the back of my mind was this idea that whenever I was to ask Claire to marry me I would then start editing a video that I would surprise her with at our wedding. Here alone was the biggest difficulty. It is not easy to keep a secret from the person who knows you best, that you live with, that you share everything with. I spent hours tracking down old hard drives, finding old footage on tape, recapturing, and formatting - not to mention the time looking for music and editing. I had kept a journal near me during the whole process taking notes whenever they came to mind - Luckily, having an idea journal near me is normal and was never questioned by Claire. This is where I would write down scenes I envisioned, songs that I could use, and extra footage that I remembered existed somewhere.
I can’t lie and say this video was just for Claire. In end all that really mattered is that she enjoyed it, but when I was making it I had heaps of other people in mind. Obviously I wanted my friends to like it too. The real trick was making a video that could be enjoyed by anyone. The best I could do was to tell the story of the last 7 years of our lives together, the adventures we’ve gone on, the time we’ve spent with our friends, the beautiful city we live in, and our family whom we love.
While the video may have taken me a long time to produce, it was fairly easy with such a good subject to work with. Obviously this video is dedicated to my best friend and love of my life, Claire.
I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it.
A few notes: first, this is Claire reporting. Secondly, we are now on our honeymoon in Costa Rica (post to come). Lastly, I have no idea how or where to start this post - a LOT happened….
We were married in Zephyr Point, which is on the Nevada side of South Lake Tahoe. Starting four days before the wedding, various friends and family joined us at the conference center and cabins were the wedding would be. Every day leading up to the big one, different preparations were made; and each night, we watched a beautiful sunset over the lake from our cabin porch. We could not have been luckier in terms of the weather … seriously, it was perfect.
Thursday evening was our rehearsal dinner (tacos and salad made by Whit’s mom, followed by peanut butter pies made by Hilary). About thirty people cozied into the main room of our cabin after eating for a round of toasts. While the rehearsal dinner had not been a priority in the scheme of things to plan for the wedding, it was an amazing experience – one that I know will stick with both Whit and myself.
The next day, guests started arriving and huge efforts were made towards the final set-up for Saturday. Seeing as we did not use a caterer, florist, or any professional help – there was a lot to do. Fortunately, we had a crew of friends and family willing and eager to help out – so all was complete in time to hang out with everyone as they arrived. Seriously though, the help we got was incredible. People were stepping up out of nowhere and pitching in on things we hadn’t even considered doing. I pause to call out any one person specifically, as there were many and each one critical in their role.
Needless to say, on Saturday - our wedding day – all went smoothly. Actually, it was everything we wanted. That morning, I did girly bridal things while Whit visited friends in different cabins and had a swim in the lake. It was a sunny, clear day – providing an ideal backdrop of the lake and mountains during the ceremony at the outdoor amphitheatre on the conference grounds. Bear (Whit’s mom) was our officiant and led a wonderful ceremony with readings and music by friends. Afterwards, the guests were ushered off to a Happy Hour in a few cabins while we had our photos taken.
Whit surprised me with a video, comprised of various footage taken over the seven years we’ve been together. It might be the best present he’s ever given me, up there with the new showerhead he picked for our first Valentine’s Day. From there, we went through a lot of the normal reception stuff – dinner, toasts, first dances, cake cutting, dancing, bouquet toss, and more dancing. Every last bite of food and cake was eaten, and a great effort was made on the wine and champagne. We were so happy with how many people danced - and pretty much how the entire night turned out.
But it didn’t end there. Sunday we picked up two kegs and barbequed at a park nearby. Another gorgeous day to spend with close friends and family – who not only killed the kegs in less than six hours but did so while enjoying baseball, croquet, bocce, and ultimate Frisbee (of course!). So much fun. We headed back to Zephyr Point in time to jump into the freezing cold waters of Lake Tahoe while the sun was still up. Even then, the water is so cold it takes your breath away.
Monday. It’s always such a downer. This was the day people had to leave. So sad after such a great weekend. By that night, we went from a party of 150+ to five. Whit, Drew, Sandy, Brad, and I enjoyed a final sunset with all the leftover food and booze. Made an amazing frittata in our new wok (seriously, it was really good), and tried our hardest to stay up – only making it til 11:00.
The next day was all about cleaning and packing before the drive back to San Francisco.
So now, we’re married! And, we have incredible memories and random lost and found items to help the experience last. Like I’ve said - and will try to say again without sounding too much like a Hallmark card – our wedding was such an extraordinary experience and we could not have hoped for anything better. We only wish we could do it again because it was so much fun!
Get a mop or hire a maid because what I’m about to explain to you is going to make it messy up there. Thomas and I were flown down to LA last Sunday to be trained on the “Fiesta Movement,” the online competition Ford is hosting in which 100 people win cars for 6 months. We knew the campaign was a pretty good idea from the beginning:
Send in a video about why you should be a Fiesta agent: Check!
Wait a little while and find out if you won. 4,000 people applied, 100 were chosen, we were chosen. That takes us to last weekend.
Next, Ford, along with Action Marketing and Undercurent, flew all the West Coast winners down to LA for what they called “agent training.” In LA we met several of the Fiesta Agents who will be playing along with us in this advertising adventure, one of whom was MoonCricket who is big in the Justin TV community. For those of you who don’t know, Justin.tv is one of those sites where you can live broadcast pretty much 24/7 and people can just watch your life. MoonCricket at any particular time during our trip in LA would have 800+ people watching and chatting to him live. (Crazy!) This is when it dawned on me that Ford had hit on something huge.
What I quickly learned is that we seemed to have two types of people here. The first were Internet celebs that have their own global micro-brands. Examples of this type were MoonCricket and his followers on Justin.Tv; Olga Kay who has over 8,000 followers on Twitter and 26,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel; Alison Haislip who hosts Attack of the Show on G4; and Danny with gradualreport who has 44,000 subscribers on YouTube and seems to just be an all around hilarious guy with a decent online presence.
The second type of person comes with more traditional media skills. For example, Jonathan 360 has a master of photography and over 62,000 twitter followers; Menace is a DJ in SF with Live 105; and Thomas and I are not web celebrities but have connections all around the web and in the Valley, as well as decent editing, filming and writing skills.
What we all seemed to have in common was a relatively large online ego. I’m asked almost daily why I would care at all about winning a car that I don’t get to keep. This isn’t a crazy question—I live in San Francisco where you don’t need a car to get around and, on top of that, I own a car. I’m not a car fanatic, and if I was it would be for ultra fuel efficient hybrids - which the fiesta is not. Now I should state that some people who won did really want a car. Chris Thompson, who is another YouTube star, lives in LA and doesn’t own a car (which seems impossible to me). My point is that Ford has chose their agents very wisely. All of us seem to have an agenda, and for the most part it has little to do with Ford and a whole lot to do with ourselves.
Why all of us want so much attention online is a whole different blog post, or maybe a conversation I’ll have with you over coffee, beer or boffee (coffee brewed with beer instead of water). What I want to elaborate on here is how well Ford honed in on this idea of the online ego. OK, so we won a car, big deal what’s next? We spend the next 6 months having our brand pimped online by Ford and 99 other Internet-famous Fiesta Agents. Why would we do this for Ford? Because it gives us easier access to exposure—plus we get to win stuff! This brings me to the brilliant master plan: whoever came up with this part of the idea gets a slow clap started by me.
Each Fiesta Agent (or team of agents) gets an Agent page at fiestamovement.com. Check us out, we’re agents #89. On top of being given a car, we were also given a little Sony camera to take video with. Now comes the genius. For every Twitter post you do with the hash tag (#) Fiestamovement, you get a point. For every YouTube video you post, you get 5 points and for every view, comment and rating you get on YouTube, you get a point. For every photo posted, you get a point. I think you get the picture. Points put you on the board, the leader on the board wins a prize. What the prize is… we just don’t know.
And, as if this isn’t enough, we are given missions. We don’t really know what a mission looks like yet, but we know they’ll happen once a month, and it’s our one single responsibility to accomplish a mission, and post a video about it. Points aside, missions must be accomplished. We find out our first mission in about 4 days—we’ll keep you posted.
So needless to say the Ford Fiesta went from having nearly nothing about it online in the United States to having 100 x Web Ego + points x 6 months. Brilliant idea.
How to Help Thomas and Me
Subscribe to our YouTube account
Subscribe to our Agent RSS. Don’t like RSS, vist our Agent page often.
Follow Thomas and Whit on Twitter.
Friend Whit and Thomas on Facebook.
Check in regularly and comment on our Flickr photos.
Most importantly, tell your friends to do the same!
Thomas and I won a Ford Fiesta for 6 months! We’re not exactly sure what that means at this point - What we do know is that we’ll be heading down to LA on the 19th in order to pick up the car. Now the question that is in your head is likely to be, what color car are you two getting? Well I’m glad I thought you might ask that. The color options for the “Ford Agents”, as they call us, were Black, Silver, Lime Green and Magenta. Because Thomas and I couldn’t have won the car without the help of so many people, we decided to leave that decision in the hands of said people.
Obviously they choose lime green…
So yes, we’ll be driving a lime green Ford Fiesta for 6 months, being agents, doing missions - Again, that is all I know.
The agent web page is up on the Fiesta Movement web site, and if you’d like to see our bio that was written by the beautiful and talented Giselle Kennedy, you should go here.
If you have no idea what i’m talking about because you’ve been hiding under a rock or have a dial-up connection, watch this (unless you have dial-up, you should just turn off your computer and read a book).
As the missions begin we’ll be posting a lot of content, probably here, on my flickr account, on facebook or friendster (j/k), youtube, and of course tweeting the bajesus out of it all on Twitter using the new Seesmic Desktop Client! <- That post to come soon.
I love Twitter.
I’ve been using it a lot recently.
Talk to me about why you should use it, the answer is simple.
Twitter is cool, I know,
but this photo is simply amazing.
Thomas is inside, and I’m locked out. I guess I could have called him, but twitter seemed to work just fine in this case.
Phones still rule too.
This post was written in simple twitter form. Short and easy. Doesn’t tell much of a story, but you get the point.
We lost a measly hour, get over it: A poem by Whit Scott
Hours come but once a day, but sometimes twenty four.
Actually they come twice a day but never any more.
but once a year they come twice a day except for one sad hour
that hour is lost in time and space by some magical time machine power.
So once a year we loose an hour? Does it just disapparate or burst?
Does it jump out of our universe, only to return on November first?
Or is life just super fast right then and that one hour is done in a minute?
if that’s the case then once a year I’ll just do an hours work in 60 seconds.
What, that’s to hard for you? It’s not enough time?
Don’t come crying to me about how your slow, I handled it just fine.
I did push ups, 2 push ups, but push ups none the less
I did the dish(es), just one, without water, saving water is the best.
I brushed my tooth, I combed my hair (1), I ran a really short mile
Instead of kissing my faience tonight, I gave her an across the room smile.
So to you complainers who “need” that hour. To you I say “pish tosh”
I think you’re just lazy, not even trying, and again i’ll say “pish tosh”.
In fact i’ll say “pish tosh” to you, and i’ll say it with a glower.
I’m so good i could loose time in my sleep, especially a measly hour.
