How will you remember your life at Texas A&M University? This is the question posed to students at Fish Camp in this video I made for Texas A&M University Dining. Back in 2009 I was asked to make a promo video for Aggie Dining that resulted in a short film titled “Buy a Meal Plan, Fall in Love.” Since then, I have made many more videos for other groups and organizations at A&M including Impact and the Division of Marketing and Communication. Part of me always wanted to make another video for Aggie Dining and last January I was asked to create an updated video to show freshmen at Fish Camp.
After working through many ideas, my friend Scuba and I chose to make something that would inspire and resonate with all freshmen. The excitement mixed with uncertainty that comes with being a freshman is the perfect catalyst for an exciting video that offers a look at the future that awaits. By linking this excitement with Dining Services I hoped to create a connection between making memories with friends and eating on campus.
Shot Entirely On A Helmet Camera
I really wanted the freshmen to see themselves in this video, so everything was filmed in first person with a GoPro HD Hero 2 Helmet Camera. This camera is awesome and made for great quality throughout the video. My friend Taylor wore it for most of the video and I wore it for some of the individual shots.
Here’s the thing about shooting an entire piece from a first person point of view, and it’s the whole reason we did it: the audience is not watching a student, they are the student. You can’t put yourself in somebody else’s shoes when you’re looking at their face. But whenever the camera is where their eyes are, and their own hands come up into the bottom of the frame, your brain does the rest for free.
It also creates a constraint that I actually liked, which is that you cannot cheat a POV shot. Everything has to happen in front of the person wearing the camera, in real time, with people reacting to them and not to a tripod. Every friend in this video is looking directly into the lens because they’re looking at Taylor, and that reads as genuine in a way a staged reaction shot never does.
A Whole Four Years In Two And A Half Minutes
The voiceover is a list of firsts, and that structure is doing all the heavy lifting. First day of class. First penny at the foot of Old Sully. The first Howdy said to a group of girls, running into them again the same day, and a friendship that never went away.
Then it starts folding the food in without ever making it feel like a commercial. A first meal at the MSC. A conversation over a simple slice of pizza that stuck with him years later. A lesson about how even something as small as a pickle slice can have a big impact on your life, which is a genuinely funny line and my favorite one in the whole script.
And a first dog named Duke, who turns out to be the single best way ever invented to make new friends.
Then it gets to the part that I think actually sells a meal plan better than any pitch could, which is the two-year anniversary dinner at Sbisa. Not because it was fancy. Because he was tight on cash and still had a pile of dining dollars, and that’s when he figured out it was never about where you eat, it was about who you’re eating with.
University Dining Was Great About All Of This
University Dining was very accommodating and the helpful employees offered free food and smiles in the video.
All of the group shots were filmed around campus over four hours, while other shots such as the dorm room scene and Sbisa date were filmed several days after.
It ends where a college story has to end, with a Thursday lunch that turns out to be the last one, a nervous question, a yes, and the rings. And then, quietly, the only ask in the whole piece: sit down with your friends, have a meal on campus, and make some memories of your own.
Watching It With 5,000 Freshmen
Because I filmed the promo video for Fish Camp I had the chance to watch the premiere of the University Dining video to the 5,000 freshmen that attended Fish Camp. It was very well received and many freshmen thought it had a great story. It is my hope that they remember this story over their next four years (or five!) at Texas A&M and make memories of their own while eating on campus.
I will say that watching something you made play to a room that size is a genuinely strange experience, because you spend the whole edit hearing it in your headphones alone and then suddenly five thousand people laugh at the pickle line at the same time. That’ll stick with you.
Big thanks to: Taylor Stanley, Bethany Debayle, Sam Paik, Seth Mcknight, Jennifer Bates, Ricardo De La Garza, Christine Lee, Andy Cronk, and Philip Barrington.
Music by Tony Anderson
Interested in having me film a promo video for your organization? Please contact me!