Video Production School

Chapter Thirteen – U of N

On the way to the University in Kona, we stopped off in Oahu to see my brother and his family. They took us to a luau out on the west coast. Then it was on to the Big Island. The weekend we got there, a big recording company was taping a worship album with a popular YWAM worship leader, Bob Fitts. They filled a hall with anyone who wanted to participate in singing in the background for the album. We gave it a shot.

We jumped right in with a “couples without kids” group who were having a game night. They were playing a game we had never heard of called four on a couch. It involved constantly switching everybody’s names on pieces of paper where people end up answering to the names on the paper rather than their real ones. Despite having fun, it confused us on people’s real names and took us a while to get everybody straight.

I began my university courses with the Video Production School. It was led by one of the guys who used to work with Procla-Media, the YWAM video production company I had worked with in Europe. Jeff and his family had come to Amsterdam just before I left. I was really excited to do the school because it was the closest to filmmaking I would get while I was pursuing this Associates of Arts degree.

The students were an eclectic mix. There was the crazier contingent of three young American single guys, there two married women, a single mom, two Korean guys, a guy from India, a Norwegian girl named Lillian and another American guy named Bill from West Virginia. Bill and I became good friends. 

We were allowed to use the video equipment to experiment as we went. Sometimes I would join the younger guys to make silly stuff and then Bill and I would do our own shorts. For our final project, we had to split up into groups. Lillian, Bill and I formed a team. We produced a piece about Hawaiians that I had created. Lillian did the camerawork, Bill did the editing and I wrote, produced and directed. We went all around the island together to shoot the footage.

Every school has to do a work duty and we were assigned to breakfast prep for the campus. We had so much fun together that we decided to shoot a video about it. There was only one problem. The kitchen was right next to some of the accommodations.

Most people start hamming it up when there’s a video camera pointed at them. For video school people, that is multiplied. We were getting a little crazy and it was early. All of a sudden, an angry parent showed up and tried to blister us about their sleeping children. We quieted down…for a short time. But the moment just got to us again. The parent came down again. At the end of the school, we had a big “Hollywood in Hawaii” premiere of all our projects for the whole campus where we all dressed up like crazy film-types. 

Meanwhile, Laura was working to pay for our living expenses. She got a job at a preschool at the Salvation Army. Once again, she walked the 20-30 minutes to work, only this time it was HOT. This was no London preschool though. It was a more difficult place to work, with some of the kids having severe emotional difficulties.

There is a lot of pent up anger in many of the Hawaiian people. A lot of bad stuff has been done to them over the years and there is a residual animosity. Unfortunately, parents often take their anger out on their children and Laura had to deal with some of the fallout. She still has scars from some of the deep scratches that came with the territory. There was one girl in particular.

This girl’s father had killed one of her siblings and she had been put in foster care with a mom that looked like Laura. Now she was back with her biological mom but didn’t want to be. So she took it out on Laura. This girl needed psychological help that she wasn’t going to get at the preschool and was being extremely disruptive. Laura told them that either this girl had to go or she would leave. The girl moved on.

Video Production School



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