Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Summer Xtreme 2020

Tonight was the night - it was the start of Summer Xtreme 2020.  We're calling it Summer Xtreme:  United.  This was a title we came up before all the recent national unrest, and it's funny how it's a fitting title now for all of us - a place we all should be.  Also, we chose the space theme before realizing that we'd have two American astronauts in space again.  So it was funny how everything fell into place there with the theme.

We spent a long time editing today, all this last minute work - pretty much like we're always doing at Summer Xtreme.  But this year, we started later due to all this recent virus nonsense.  And on top of that, we just lost a week last week because of a potential scare with an employee.  So we've been desperately busy the last few days, filming, filming, filming, and then editing, editing, editing.  One weekend, I did nine videos, and then the last two days I filmed fifteen videos in Suwanee, by Lake Lanier and at our Gainesville Campus.  Then it was time for editing.  And also the booklet graphics.  And the emails going out.  And the social media posts... it's been busy for me lately, so I fell behind on this blog a little.

But tonight everything went off without a hitch.  There's still so much to do for the next two days, but for tonight, we stopped to watch our programming.  We even had a viewing party of sorts, a few of us gathering at the KidPak auditorium to watch something on our KidPak screen.


It felt like old times in a way, although there was just a handful of us there.  The service was about forty-seven minutes or so, and this was due to the worship, the game, the Tribes in Space cartoon, and of course, the new skit series.  I snapped a few pictures of our Summer Xtreme on our KidPak screen.


Tonight was part one of a small series of skits that takes place in "Mission Control."  We filmed this over a week ago during a particularly long filming session.  But everyone had a great time filming it, and it showed.  This morning we were still editing the final pieces of it together, including music and sound effects.  Also, we added some of the backdrop for Nerdo here, who is in a space caspsule we call Spaceship McSpaceshipface.


Mission Control has a lot of characters of course, but the one I was most proud of tonight was the return of Mei-Mei to the KidPak cast.  Madison did well when we recorded these skits a week and a half ago, but today we finally got to see the finished product, all of it edited together.  And it was neat to see her with the rest of the cast.


You can see her here with Jovanna, the two of them cutting up and having fun.  There are a lot of characters in Mission Control, so the lines are spread out quite a bit.  Madison had a few good lines in there tonight, and of course has a few lines coming up in the coming days.


Ultimately, the story is more from Mission Control, as the characters are attempting to get Nerdo - who is in space - back home.  There's a bit of inspiration drawn from the movie, "The Reluctant Astronaut," with lines from "Rocket Man" and a few other space-themed episodes thrown in.  But there are plenty of lines that I wrote in there, plus a few hilarious improv moments too.


We were seated in the KidPak Auditorium, but our friends were all in different places, watching online like many of the kids at KidPak.  They had an ongoing group text, watching the entire evening together live.


Calvin is in many of these shots tonight, as he's the reporter covering a story taking place at Mission Control.  Camille is back with the KidPak cast, playing a somewhat ditsy daughter of the Director.  We had a full cast, and they were really enjoying watching the end product.


So was Pastor Lance.  He sat with Josh, Madison and myself as we watched it all together.  It is so weird to be in this auditorium, right at a time when there is usually so much commotion and energy from Summer Xtreme.  And yet there's just a few of us there watching together.


You can the worship sessions above.  There were two separate places along the service for that, and one was filmed in the old warehouse where we filmed a previous Summer Xtreme movie.  Chris did a great job editing these together.  And Isaac was editing a lot of the things for the younger kids too.  This year, I did quite a bit with him, making the younger kids event something special.


Here's Pastor Joe from our Buford campus.  We filmed this just yesterday down at Gwinnett's campus, and yes, he's got a "UNITED" shirt on there, one we made for this event.  As with our usual series, we have the campus pastors preaching each point, three per day.  Today's also included Camille.


She did a great job as well.  We of course picked the media control centers because they sort of had that Mission Control look about them.  The one in Gwinnett is pretty nice, so we were there for filming quite a bit the last few days.


All in all it was a good night.  Josh here has been editing quite a lot, and will be doing so tonight, and all throughout tomorrow as well.  That's probably why it's a good idea now to shut things down and get some rest.  It was good to have Summer Xtreme again, and it took a worldwide pandemic to get it back.  It's been good though!


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