SOME BEACH! THAT'S A GOOD IDEA!

SOME BEACH!  THAT'S A GOOD IDEA!

It all started while I was walking along humming Blake Shelton's song, Some Beach back in December 2014.  You know how it is when a song gets stuck in your head..."rollin down the interstate, runnin thirty minutes late, singing Margaritaville and mindin my own.."  If you've never heard the song, it's about a likeable guy who has a bad day...traffic, road rage, crowded parking, overzealous dentist, etc...and each time that he wants to exclaim "son-of-a-b*tch," he tempers it with "some beach" instead.  It really is quite funny and catchy; so ditch your country music bias and go listen to the song...but I digress.

So, I've got this golf buddy - Mike Ruppert - and while he has calmed down a lot over the years, he was once renown for: a) hitting a bad shot, b) swearing loudly and c) launching his club in some random direction.  And I really mean random.  One hole he'd wing it out there like a Boeing 737 headed north.  On another, it would look like a helicopter approaching a Kandahar airstrip to the east.  And of course, my personal favorite, the straight-down, "Tomahawked wedge" (i.e. club buried in the sand so deep you can't even see the club head.)  Us golf buddies all enjoyed (and still enjoy) playing with Ruru; his "volcanic eruptions" are just some of the many entertaining events that one experiences in 5-hours on the links.   

That's when...BAM!...it hit me...no, not one of Ruru's clubs...although he has come close.  No, BAM!, I should develop a video to Some Beach starring Ruru, but instead of traffic and parking lot and dentist trouble...he has golf trouble.  The storyline would be him hitting golf balls into sand traps and - nature taking its course - reacting accordingly.  But how to do that?

To make a 2-month story short(er)...I had to collect photos, write lyrics, get the Kareoke version of the song, build Powerpoint slides, in-port photos, consistently size the slides...ooops then some of the photos don't look right...get more photos, get different photos, hey wait!...this needs to be a movie...so I'll video tape the Powerpoint presentation while narrating over each slide...yeah that's it...that way I can ensure the timing of the song with the advancement of the slides...but turns out the quality of the photos isn't very good that way...damn!...OK, different camera...nope...maybe I can video the computer screen...nope...too many refresh lines...distracting...OK, I'll just have to build in the exact timing transitions for each slide in Powerpoint...but wait, how am I gonna get the audio embedded...oh, Powerpoint will let you do that...but I still need an audio file that exactly (well...nearly exactly) matches the slides...so, using 2 laptops...2 Ipads... and the best "Sound Girl" in Carlsbad - my wife - Mary Ellen, we build a sound file that matches up with the advancement of the slides...tie the 2 together and then convert the ppt to mp4 and...wala...it's done!  Enjoy! http://youtu.be/tQFjqPqMq_Y