Catching the Video Production Bug

I’ve had people ask when I caught the “video production bug”. It’s different for everyone. For me, it was in High School. I’ve always loved videography and photography, and that love was heightened in my later years when digital was making a big push into the space. But prior to that, it was all film-based.

In High School, I took 3 years of Spanish as my foriegn language of choice. Mainly because it was the easiest option available (I’m not very good at picking up foreign languages). In my senior year (my 3rd year of Spanish), we were required to participate in a project for class that would be a major part f our grade for that year. The assignment: to find a product and create a commercial for it… in Spanish.

At the time, my parents had bought a 1986 baby blue Toyota Camry for the kids in the family to use (a.k.a.: “the kids’ car”). I loved that car. I even modified it by adding a car alarm system and fake car phone antenna on the back window (back when those were cool). I washed and waxed it often. It was a fun car to drive. SO naturally, that was the perfect product to use for our commercial.

I partnered with another classmate and off we went to film and edit our commercial. It was long enough ago that I don’t remember most of the details, but I remember we filmed it on VHS tape using my parents’ RCA Camcorder. We then used a reel-to-reel audio machine to record ourselves speaking in Spanish as the voice-over commentary.

To this day, I really wish I could remember more details of how we assembled it, but to be honest, those details aren’t that important. What IS important is how excited I got when filming, editing and ultimately showing off my work to the rest of the class.

Many, many years later, I was curious to know if that video still existed, so I called my parents. To my utter surprise, they still had the VHS tape!! So, without further ado, I present to you my High School senior Spanish project!

PS. My Spanish is horrible, so no judging!