This experience is special to me, as it involved so much of what I love about producing digital media and producing all aspects of a projects, audio and visual.
One of my best friends, Joe “Flounder” Piesz, is an extremely hard worker and radio personality at the time in Grand Rapids, Thunder 94.5. As the story goes, we were living together at the time when he presented me with a unique opportunity to make a video for a local talent contest he was entered in for the local celebrities. So being newer to the city of Grand Rapids, and with my new job at WKTV I was ready to take on any project. When I look back, I donno what I was doing when I came to the aspect ratio. I completely botched that. I remember shooting it on tape, with a SONY DSR250 that I wasn’t too familiar with and as you can see (I did manage to borrow a dolly from John P., which helped us out on quality but…) I mostly hacked my way through shooting this one. But content always reigns over quality. I was producing a lot of rap music at the time so I had beats, dog. Shouts to my boy Chris Bemben that featured on the keys for the music. Joe Piesz and I co-wrote the song together. Bars. I got ’em. So on top of Joe and I writing the song, we still had an incomplete song with no chorus. My vision was to get the actual girl scouts to sing the song. So, thats what I did. The morning of the video shoot, we got everyone together and I coached the girls to sing the song. They were naturals. A memory I will forever look back and laugh on! We had a lot of fun and it was a great achievement. This video was shot maybe only 3-4 months of me moving to Grand Rapids, and I defiantly got a big head when we made news there so quickly. That’s pretty typical of Joe and I though. Check out the pictures below too. Oh yeah, they played the music video in front of thousands of people downtown Grand Rapids on New Years Eve, 2010. That video this linked here.

Girl Scouts of America Music Video:

Joe and I on the “Take Five” Morning Show in Grand Rapids.