Experience of a Lifetime: Observing The Who fans at Fenway Park get energized about Teen Cancer America’s mission after watching my compelling video
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By: Deegan Mundy, Creative Producer
Being a videographer means spending your life behind a camera or in front of a screen. Working on a video from start to finish takes time. So. Much. Time. You storyboard and concept, you interview countless people about their stories and their ideas. You spend hours in all sorts of random places getting b‑roll. You get sweaty and crawl around in weird positions (or stand on countless step-stools if you’re 5’3 like me.) Then you take all of that footage and you sort through it, over and over, cutting things and moving them around to somehow create a comprehensive story out of the seemingly endless hours of footage you filmed. Once that’s done you color-correct and edit audio. There’s more, but you get the point.
The reason I’m boring you with all this information is to say that when you create a video, no matter how big or small, you feel close to it and it feels like a little part of you. You spend so much time behind the camera, trying to make something that people will watch — that they will want to watch. And you’re trying to make sure the client is happy that you get the story right for them. But after you do all of that shooting and editing, you put your video out there in the world. And most of the time, once it’s out there, it’s out there — it’s not very often that you actually get to experience people watching that little piece of you that you worked so hard to create.
Well, I caught a lucky break and got to experience exactly that this past September when a video that I created for our client, Teen Cancer America, played before each show of The Who’s Moving On tour. Teen Cancer America was created by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend to make sure teens with cancer have their own special place in hospitals and treatment centers, so the band was gracious enough to lend their massive audience and much, much, more to the cause.
So, I flew to Boston on a Friday afternoon and lined up outside Fenway Park. I kept checking my watch — I had no idea when the video would play, and I was anxious not to miss it. I scanned my ticket and searched for my seat. Then I sat and waited. Peter Wolf finished his set and they started to prepare the stage for The Who. I waited and waited, the whole time wondering if maybe something went wrong, maybe they weren’t going to play it for this show.
I cut the video to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” because I figured that using its iconic power chords, I could command the attention of a crowd in the tens of thousands. The second I heard it, I looked up at the screen. People cheered (they thought the show was starting…a possibility I had counted on) and the first three notes played along with the motion graphic I’d started the video with, old videos of Roger Daltrey inside the Circles of The Who’s logo. I watched as something that I had created at my little desk every day for weeks— something I had stayed late to audio edit— played on two huge screens on each side of the stage in front of 40,000 pairs of attentive eyes.
Earlier I said it’s not very often that you actually get to experience people watching your video. ‘Experience’ is really the only way to describe it. Hearing it on those speakers, seeing people’s eyes look up at the screen, realizing that Pete and Roger (I felt like we were on a first name basis after those hours of editing) had watched this video and that I had made them happy and done their amazing organization justice.
At the end of the video, the guy a row in front of me said ‘That is really, really cool. So awesome.’ And then that was it. The show went on, the performance was amazing, and everyone left that stadium having no clue who made that video. But I knew, and seeing people moved by something I’d worked so hard on, as well as many other team members, is a memory I’ll never forget.
