New Civil Air Patrol PSA's

[TheSkyHornet]

Here you go:
http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=20276.0

Made a new topic just for the project

[LSThiker]

This may be a good way to get into a local school as well. Put something together, then have the local High School AV class help film and edit. Might be a good way to recruit a few new Cadets by getting others involved.

STEM

The point was to get CAP members on board (including those of CAP Talk), not to segregate this with a single locale.

I have heard that argument over and over and over and over throughout the years.  People for some odd reason think that the effort needs to be a large scale, multi-wing project that costs thousands of dollars. 

People seem to rather want to just complain about NHQ, rather than actually make a difference.  Even if NHQ does not accept it immediately, push it at the region level.  Sooner or later, NHQ might see the value and adopt it as well. 

[A.Member]

Simply terrible.

There is nothing exciting nor inspiring about those PSAs.  As others stated, they are amateurish and I wouldn't share them with any prospective recruit or the public.

Frankly, I'm very unimpressed by the work being done by National PAOs and these attempts don't further their cause.  I've never met them in person but provided direct feedback with suggestions for improvement and even offered assistance on several occasions.  For all practical purposes, that feedback was met with crickets.  They need to step aside or at a minimum open themselves up to the insights from other professionals in the space.

[TheSkyHornet]

This may be a good way to get into a local school as well. Put something together, then have the local High School AV class help film and edit. Might be a good way to recruit a few new Cadets by getting others involved.

STEM

The point was to get CAP members on board (including those of CAP Talk), not to segregate this with a single locale.

I have heard that argument over and over and over and over throughout the years.  People for some odd reason think that the effort needs to be a large scale, multi-wing project that costs thousands of dollars. 

People seem to rather want to just complain about NHQ, rather than actually make a difference.  Even if NHQ does not accept it immediately, push it at the region level.  Sooner or later, NHQ might see the value and adopt it as well.

It doesn't cost thousands of dollars to get people to throw around ideas, shoot some videos, and edit them.

Like I said, people do it as a hobby on YouTube. There is nothing costly about getting someone at a squadron in California to shoot a quick video on ES training, email it off to someone who can crop it and insert it into other videos sent in by someone from Florida or Missouri. It takes a little bit of experience and software. I'm sure you could get a bunch of people on here to help piece something together from their own squadrons and get it made into a professional-looking video to share with NHQ and get the approval to distribute it.

This is 2015. The internet is remarkable for sharing information. It's a matter of getting it done and it being quality.

[LSThiker]

It doesn't cost thousands of dollars to get people to throw around ideas, shoot some videos, and edit them.

That was my point, it does not.  However, for some odd reason, people think that any new project (not just video making) requires multi-wing and/or thousands of dollars to get NHQ to accept it.  Further, I keep hearing the old argument of "well I cannot do it" and so they just abandon the idea.  But they still complain about NHQ.

It seems like members want to make projects more complex than they really are, then get mad about how complex their project is.   

[TheSkyHornet]

It doesn't cost thousands of dollars to get people to throw around ideas, shoot some videos, and edit them.

That was my point, it does not.  However, for some odd reason, people think that any new project (not just video making) requires multi-wing and/or thousands of dollars to get NHQ to accept it.  Further, I keep hearing the old argument of "well I cannot do it" and so they just abandon the idea.  But they still complain about NHQ.

It seems like members want to make projects more complex than they really are, then get mad about how complex their project is.

My response to that is "If you can't do it, does that prevent you from finding and working with someone who can?"

The only time someone can't do something is when they physically cannot perform a task. They can still work with a project. Projects don't have to be complex if you figure out what the objective of the project is and organize an effort to get it done. The only time it becomes overly difficult is when you want to do it all yourself. Gotta make it a team effort.

[Capt Thompson]

I had a lengthy conversation with my Wing PAO this morning about the subject. He told me they ran a video contest last year, with only two submissions being sent by deadline, neither of which were any good.

I told him I would work with my Squadron to come up with something better, and then maybe he can send it to the other units as an example. We obviously failed last year, but the idea is good, so we need to pick the reins back up and move forward until we find a way to succeed.

[Holding Pattern]

Perhaps we should recognize that this sort of thing is outside our core competency list and outsource the creation of it. Yes, that means spend money.

Or run screaming to the AF liaisons for help.

I've done the small business/non-profit: "Hire a friend that knows something about which end of a camera is which" with some good results and some terrifying results. I've also done the "hire a professional to coach the person on to look and sound awesome." The latter was worth every single penny.

It is also worth noting that as you put people in front of the camera, you'll see that some people do well there and some do not. As an example, no level of training will make me any good in front of a camera. But there are 20+ other people to check with in my squadron for whom might be a good person to be the "face" of our local squadron.

I'll start kicking around some ideas with some marketing gurus on this.

[Capt Thompson]

The original idea was to come up with ideas, shoot them, and then send up the chain to National, who can then appropriate some funds towards having them done professionally maybe? At the beginning stages we wouldn't have to reach out to a pro, but I agree the final product should be professional before hitting the air.

[TheSkyHornet]

I think it could actually be done without fronting much, if any, expenditures. Very minimal maybe.

Set simple objectives:
- Organize ideas for the final product
- Build the storyline
- Determine the clips wanted to support the storyline
- Get volunteers to provide those clips
- Get someone to edit the clips into a full-length commercial
- Figure out what music is needed
- Get someone to add in music
- Photoshop some shiny text and a logo
- Stamp Photoshopped works into the video
- Take it to NHQ for approval
- Publish

These are very easily-accomplished tasks. What will take time is getting the footage, and the creative skill bits. They're doable. It's just a matter of making sure they get done in a reasonable, assigned time frame.

Are we assuming that we don't hand a bunch of people in CAP across the country who can't spend 20 minutes at a meeting to get some video footage and email it back (or drop it into a share folder)? We can surely find people in CAP to do some video and audio editing. We already have self-admitted Photoshop folks on here. Let's find some video editors and get someone who can tweak some audio.

It really doesn't sound all that hard to do this in-house if we can locate the resources when time comes to start getting the puzzle pieces assembled. Before we even go the extent of figuring out we will edit it all, I think we first need to figure out what the video is going to be so we can target our "experts" based on what we want the final outcome to be.