Remembering "The Montage" Five Years Later (Video)

I've worked on countless audio/video projects over the last handful of years... job-related, school-related, and ones just for fun. But nothing has matched the feedback that I received for a class project back in April 2006.

During that time, I was a sophomore at Pittsburg State University and taking my very first broadcasting course, Introduction to Audio & Video Production. Our major assignment for that course was to make a music montage... And that, my friends, is where we begin this little stroll down memory lane.

I had more fun in the '05-'06 school year than I thought was humanly possible. In fact, to this day, I still consider my sophomore year of college to be the greatest year of my life. I knew right away that I wanted my music montage to commemorate that particular time in my life. There was one song that was screaming out to me as the perfect choice because of one line in the chorus:

"Those were the best days of my life."

- Summer of '69, Bryan Adams

I had a distinct vision in mind for my montage, but I needed some help from six guys. These weren't just any guys. (I met them all for the first time in August during "RA Training", and they had quickly become my best friends.) To do this right, we needed to block off an entire afternoon to shoot video footage for the montage. It was not an easy task, but on a Sunday in April, we spent five hours together doing the same activities we had been doing all year long. Only this time, it was in front of a camera.

(FYI - Five years later, I'm still very close with these guys. Despite living in places like San Francisco, Dallas, Kansas City, and Denver, we've made it a point to meet up at least once a year.)

Whenever I think about my music montage, these scenes with the boys are always the first thing that come to mind. Afterall, they make up about 75% of the video. But I was still missing something - video to go with the 2nd verse, in particular. What I needed was a female co-star...

The obvious choice was my girlfriend at the time, who I had only been dating for a few months. It took some heavy persuading, and she reluctantly accepted. I would later be told by several people that it was this 25% of the video that made the montage.

(...And oh yeah, I wound up marrying that same girl three years later.)

The music had been selected. The video had been shot. The only thing left to do was edit, and let me tell you, I have NEVER had so much fun editing something in my entire life. I wanted to get it done as soon as possible so that I could show everyone. And when I was finished, this is what they saw...

A FEW QUICK NOTES ABOUT THE MONTAGE

• We originally called this the "Summer of '69 Video" or "The Rye Addis Music Montage", but over time it simply became known as THE MONTAGE.
• Like I said, all the group shots of me and the boys occurred in just one afternoon.
• The handful of photographs shown were all taken during that year.
• This was truly a golden age for my hair.
• Why are we cheering on top of bleachers? That's to simulate the Jungle Humpers (which is mentioned at the very beginning), a student cheering section that we started.
• During the group hug, you may notice the battle for male supremacy between me and another one of the guys. We weren't able to do a second take because the battery died.
• One of these guys (the one who couldn't stop touching his nipples) used the raw footage from our shoot to make his own school project. He called it, "A True Story of Friendship: Deleted Scenes & Outtakes from The Rye Addis Music Montage." For my money, it may be the funniest 15 minutes ever produced.