Detention's a Pitch

This project was a blast to work on. The entire thing from start to finish happened during the second half of my last semester of high school. This project counted as both a part of my final project in my "TV Production and Digital Communication" course as well as the opening video for my a cappella group. This was made for The Crazy Pitches, Brighton High School's mixed a cappella group. Every year, they have their "Pitch Black" concert where all the songs learned during the second semester are performed. As well, to open the show, they like to have a video. I offered to be the one to film and edit, and others from the group "pitched" in where they could. 

Starting with the script, we all got together as a group to brainstorm ideas on what the theme of the video could be. We decided to lean into a "Breakfast Club" theme where we could try and replicate some stereotypical high school cliques. By doing this, each group was able to add their own little quirks and inside jokes into each of their activities. Elyse Broder took the charge for scriptwriting and then passed it off to me to direct. Filming took a couple hours one afternoon after school. We wanted to keep filming to only one day, both for the simplicity of everyone in the group and also for our guest, Dr. Thomas Hall. Thomas is the principal of BHS and was an enthusiastic actor to work with. His seriousness on screen is on the opposite of his general character in day-to-day life, and satirizing that contrast is something we wanted to go for as a group. While there are a lot of inside jokes, as previously mentioned, the story does still have plenty of references, like The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls. Being able to weave these together made the project a little more fun to work on, being able to see the moments where people feel the most in their element and able to give something to this project.

While editing, clipping everything together was relatively simple. We only had a limited amount of takes per scene, so finding the best times to cut was easy. Since I was newer to editing with Premiere Pro, adding all the effects and sounds that I wanted took longer than I expected. The hardest thing for me to edit was the transitions into the other scenes. Using that ripple effect as a transition took a while, in conjunction with the sound effect (I wanted something super specific, the sound from Webkinz: Wishing Well 2 Minigame). 

Seeing it all come together, I am so happy with the project, and I know everyone else in the group feels the same. The Pitch Black concert videos in the previous couple of years had not been as strong in the way of a story and general audience enjoyment, and I'm happy that I could leave my mark on this group in this way.