Lights, Cameras, Action: Making a Virtual Parade our Reality!
Special Thanks to the Community, SCPOC Core, Ray Pulver, Greg Green, Taylor Amarante, Kevin Wing Productions and Beyond Blue Pix for bringing the Tech to a 52 year old tradition!
Santa Clara Parade of Champions has a long history dating back to 1945. The post WWII boom and the birth of Silicon Valley changed the landscape of Santa Clara Valley forever but it didn't change who we are as a community. Although the parade was born at the center of Silicon Valley, if not for this pandemic 75 years later we might never have taken this giant leap into virtual cyberspace. The year 2020 has been an unprecedented year for SCPOC and our community. We learned Zoom and how to navigate online collaborations, hired professionals to guide us through all the moving production parts and expertise. We worked with parade pros, webmasters, stage techs, studio green screens, production and editing teams, social media integration and live stream technology, expanded our social media to a 24/7 YouTube Channel--all this to celebrate what went right this year because of our amazing community and front line heroes. We knew this was a historic landmark year one that we will be look back on for decades to come and the only way that made sense was create our own movie with a little help from the pros.
Below is a photo of the morning prep at the SF Studios of Beyond Pix and our Stage and production team members--it was amazingly well orchestrated multi task event. The two hour video opens to joyful images of the 2019 parade after a 24 year hiatus.
That segue moves into an energetic by our livestream emcee Taylor Amarante, the Earthquakes in house announcer, and one of our SCPOC founders and President, Ana Vargas-Smith to thank our 2020 community leaders and heroes. Taylor does an amazing job of interacting and multitasking with the Chat audience. The video then open to our a rendition of our national anthem followed by the next pre-recorded segment with Mayor Lisa Gillmor, City council and our heroic essential city front line heroes that kept us safe, healthy, protected and informed during this unprecedented pandemic.
Although you can't see it, behind these well orchestrated livestream scenes led by Taylor Amarante, we have Beyond Pix and Kevin Wing Productions team managing the organized chaos--its good to have Emmy award winning pros on the team to make it all look easy. Kevin has 30 years of experience as a journalist, TV anchor, documentarian and industry relationships--all that made for a quality final community project that ticked all the boxes in making this commemorative video.
Most importantly, none of this could have been made without the content of 120 videos recorded and submitted by our community leaders, heroes, nonprofits, businesses, sponsors and individuals who felt as strongly as we did about this unforgettable year. Special thanks to our SCPOC Core team for the countless hours doing the outreach by email, zoom and yes--the phone calls-- to make sure we coordinated the video process seamlessly and included everyone who wanted to participate in this virtual collaborative process.
In the meantime stay safe and healthy until we can gather again on October 9th 2021--the next Santa Clara Parade of Champions. It promises to be even bigger judging from all the feedback. We love you Santa Clara, you make us all proud.
