Yesterday, Today Tomorrow: Diggin’ Dukes

Diggin’ Dukes is James Madison University Athletic’s largest annual giving campaign, it is run by the official fundraising arm for James Madison University Athletics, the Duke Club.

It wasn’t originally supposed to be my project, or at least not in full, but I was asked to take a swing at writing the scripts. I was given the campaign objectives, the words “Yesterday,” “Today,” and “Tomorrow” and pretty much full creative freedom.

I threw myself into this campaign straight out of the gate, writing the script drafts for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow in about 24 hours. I wanted them to feel like poetry and the words just flowed.

Those scripts became the backbone for the four part campaign, created over the span of about a month.

I worked that following week on the launch video, the first of the series to be released

Launch

This video was one of the most challenging I’ve ever done. It was probably a hundred hour week for me. It was hours of combing through physical archives, and digitizing footage, bringing back to life moments that hadn’t been seen in years.

It is my favorite video I’ve ever made.

When we had gone to the archives to get the VHS tapes that we digitized I started taking mental notes and trying to come up with shot ideas for the intro.

I’d brought a camera and 1 light so I could get some example shots.

From there I made a storyboard.

The files and the shelves were filmed in the actual archives but I shot the rest separately.

I’d picked out some things when we were there like the negatives, the photos, the newspapers, that roll of film and from there it was just figuring out the movement we wanted in the first part.

Our goal was to move primarily backwards in motion because we were “going back in time” and also moving down because I liked the idea of going “down into the archives”

I knew I wanted to do the newspaper transition all along, but kinda went down a couple paths before I actually ended up executing it practically

I knew I wanted the film roll to look like it was actually being projected so I needed more dispersed light with more mobility to move around (to create cool shadows through the roll and also make the light flare) than I had with the light beams we have from JMU so it’s lit with my iPhone. (Mae controlled our lighting while I filmed, so it was really just us laying on the floor in a dark room waving a flashlight around) I envisioned a spotlight type shot somewhere in the beginning anyway so I made it a small scale thing with the photo and my phone light through a paper tube.

The roots thing I came up with in Italian class, and my boss, James got my vision and helped me bring it to life

I came to JMU our first year in the SunBelt, this video was the one I was the most excited to make because it meant getting to use the best work of all of the creatives who have shaped me.

I anticipated this one to be the most difficult and dreaded it for most of the time I spent working on the campaign. I had left the script open ended intentionally because I had no idea how to make a video about something that hadn’t happened yet.

Somehow though, this one was the easiest to make, it just flowed, it just fit.