As musicians, dancers, decked-out trucks and costumed performers paraded down Greenleaf Avenue, Whittier College students put their filmmaking skills to use, keeping pace with the Uptown Christmas Parade to capture the cheerful tradition.
A dozen students worked together to film the parade on December 16. When Jakob Rippe ’22 wasn’t capturing interviews with dignitaries, he worked on getting close-up shots of the ever-moving spectacle. The parade was an exciting learning experience he’d be happy to repeat.
“You never know what to expect. Anything from surprise appearances to equipment malfunctions, it’s all in the moment and you have to be ready to adapt at all times,” Rippe said. “I gained new skills during the planning and filming of the parade as it was a constantly moving object that needed teamwork and coordination to successfully capture on film.”
Meanwhile, one of his teammates, Vanessa Gudino ’22, was ensuring they got coverage of the commentators. It was a lot of pressure; she had never filmed a live event before, and the experience kept her on her toes.
Although Gudino is more interested in writing, directing, and editing down the line, she’s happy to have gained the valuable hands-on experience.
“It taught me how to work effectively and meticulously within a short time frame and it allowed me to test out my knowledge of filming techniques in an on-the-spot situation,” she said.
Directing live event coverage was a first for Riley Ramirez ’21, but he brought the same focus on organization, planning, and assembly of a well-balanced crew that he would to his personal, scripted film projects. Thanks to the time and efforts spent on assembling a team and planning a play-by-play of the schedule, their collective efforts provided him and fellow editor Lauren Blazey ’20 (who was also post-production supervisor) with plenty of quality content to weave together into a final product, which has been streaming on the City of Whittier’s CityTV Channel 3 website.
“Overall this project helped mature how I would direct any project I undertake from a live-coverage event to a rehearsed and abstract scripted film,” Ramirez said.
