I love Animoto. I’ve written previously about doing several productions on commencement and alumni weekend, packaging dozens of photos with music using Animoto and posting them on Youtube. They’ve brought a whole new audiences to us.
Last week we discovered one more. As Christie, my student employee, and I stood out of the porch enjoying a break, a helicopter flew over and circled. “What’s up with that?” Christie asked.
“It’s for Camp Cadet,” I said, realizing I’d forgotten all about it. The helicopter landed behind the mountain on the football field for a demonstration. “Let’s send Matt up for photos,” I said.
Christie was way ahead of me. She and Matt spent the next three days photographing. Photos of the helicopter demo, the session with the drug-sniffing dog, covering a simulated crime scene, and lots of marching.
Camp cadet is sponsored by the State Police. The kids get up at 5:30 every morning, work out, eat breakfast and get on with activities, moving to each new spot in that well-rehearsed march which the kids seem to love.
“I have yet to get a picture of someone smiling,” Christie said after the third day. They were a pretty serious bunch. She went to the cafeteria during lunch. As she took photos she told the kids they were going to be on Youtube. The kids were excited. The counselors were excited. The State Police were excited.
At the end of the week, armed with several hundred photos, Christie spent the weekend producing two shows for Youtube.
Now I’m figuring that every kid will go home and check Youtube. They will text friends. Parents will check it out and call friends and relatives. It sounds like the state police will spread the word among their colleagues.
Again, these are new audiences we wouldn’t otherwise have had.
I’m not concerned about recruiting students. In this case I’m more interested in giving people that something extra, finding new viewers and underscoring that Mansfield is up on the technology.
And yes, we’re going to cover some more camps.
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