Once my rotation ended, I had to immediately begin the requisite 18 hrs of sleep. Then it was off to West Lafayette. You see, I had sort of put off an assignment I had been given. I was part of a committee in charge of making a graduation video for the College of Pharmacy’s Class of 2014. I had 4 days. The bar set by the previous year was a parody of Thrift Shop by Macklemore with lyrics rewritten to be about substituting brand name medications with generic equivalents.
All hope was not to be lost. I had a tripod, a phone, and a dream. Also, a car. And thanks to the dedicated efforts of Holly (our lyricist/storyboard artist/acting coach/gaffer) and Nick (our vocalist/personal trainer/executive producer/networking administrator), we had recorded our own song with rewritten lyrics.
But to make this video? To film actual footage to go along with the lyrics? I would have to take on my greatest challenge yet:
Networking.
We needed people to appear in the video. As in, not just me. After all, the whole theme of the video was that no one graduates alone. So where was I going to get, uh, “friends”? Well, uh… let’s just say, Thank god for friends. (Stacy, who was able to get me Michael, who was able to get me Becky, Drew, Paul, and other assorted cast.) We managed to get a few scenes done on campus, at the pharmacy building and at a beloved local dive bar. Holly and Andrea were able to provide footage for some verses, but not all.
But it still wasn’t enough. I needed more. More footage, more people.
So I got access to the photo committee’s large pool of photos of, shall we say, festive libation ceremonies. Well, enough to finish the choruses (Chori? Chorusi?). And I managed to get enough Vine video and new footage to fill out the verses. And some footage from the performances on the last day of class to fill in the bridge.
So given two days, one non-functional fountain, and one refrigerator, I came up with this:
Contents:
- Photos of nights out
- Vine videos
- facebook photos
- Videos of karaoke day last year
- new footage from around campus filmed over the course of two days
And so isn’t it a little ironic, but also wholly fitting? That to do the nearly impossible, I would call upon friends? To pull my butt out of the fire at the last minute? Yeah… but that wasn’t the only obligation I had this week…