Pictures of Us

The cliché goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ll try to keep this blog post under that (Rejoice!).

Hello all, I’m Brendan McKeon and I make videos. I’ve been enlisted to talk about the 2008 Brooklyn Cyclones Images of the Year, which debuted following Friday’s unfortunate loss to Aberdeen. For those who saw it, we appreciate your patronage. For those who didn’t, what are you waiting for? Check it out.

I’m not going sit here and write up a blog post on video editing techniques. (This would immediately pop into your head.) However, I’ll talk about a couple things about the video and give credit where credit is properly due.

First up, the song choice. The song is always the first thing that’s decided on, as everything else needs to be molded around it. For those who don’t recognize it, the song is called Pictures of You by The Last Goodnight. I’ve been mildly obsessed with it since it came out last summer. (It currently sits at #2 on my iTunes “Top 25 Most Played”… what’s #1? Umm… No Comment.) As a production guy, I have a list of songs that I’d want to make a video for, songs that perfectly capture an emotion (or have a kickin’ drum beat). This fit the bill.

The goal of the end-of-the-year video is to capture not just the 2008 Brooklyn Cyclones baseball season, but the entire experience a fan gets when coming out to KeySpan Park. It perfectly answers the question, “Who are the Brooklyn Cyclones?”

Thus we needed a concept. How we got picture frames from the song title “Pictures of You”, I’ll never know. But still pictures in a frame tell a story that sometimes even the best moving images cannot. So we printed out some pictures, “borrowed” a frame from the office, and went outside to shoot a still image (confession: not as exciting as it sounds).

Most (read: all) the credit for the final product goes to catcher/editor/wall hooky hero Tim Nelson. Anything you’ve seen on our video board that made you think, “wow that was kind of cool” probably came from him. Kudos also to the rest of the video staff for giving us the great great shots to use in it as well.

These are the types of videos every production person loves to make. It’s something that’s been in the works literally the entire year (we’ve had a cut of it since mid-July I believe). It may not be the funniest or most creative thing to come out of the Production Dept, but I think I can say with almost 100% certainty that it’s the most professional piece we’ve ever produced.

With that, I’ll sign off. Hope everyone enjoys the 2008 Brooklyn Cyclones Images of the Year, and that everyone will be back in Coney Island for what will surely be another memorable season of Cyclones Baseball. Cheers, see ya in June!

-- Brendan