Something's off here...
So here I am in Colorado Skyping into the spring concert being put on by my high school in Indiana. Reminds me of when I was there... yeah I'm a nostalgic person. I told you this already. So I played in the band. Oh did that band suck... but it was fun and that's what made it worth it. Our band director was one of us. He had the spunk of a teenager infused into an adult body. It didn't help when it came to discipline because none of us took him seriously, but looking back, I don't care as much.
I'm getting off on a tangent. Moving on, for last year's concert, we wanted to make an epic. The majority of the stellar players in band were seniors and we were not going to go out with a pathetic little run-of-the-mill concert. With some thought, we decided on making the concert movie themed. Within the vast collection of music in the band room lay numerous soundtracks. Our director jumped on board and found an LOTR score online. At the time, I hadn't read any of the LOTR books or seen any of the movies. In fact, half of the seniors hadn't seen it so our director took it upon himself to bring us all over to watch the trilogy. I gotta say, that's a good series. Probably won't get to reading the books, though.
We had all the music lined up. It included everything from Pirates of the Caribbean to Indiana Jones to 2001: A Space Odyssey. One day a few months before the concert, I remembered a cheesy Indiana Jones remake I made with my friend. I used that glorious editing program known as "paint" to swap in the face of my friend for Indy's face. It was ugly... but yeah. At least it provided inspiration. I was bored and I had fun doing the same with my band director's face (this time using a more sophisticated program called Photoshop). It wasn't pretty, but I proudly showed the gag to my director.
After one of my friends saw it, he suggested we do it with an LOTR poster. But wait, we needed a way to advertise the concert! This could be our way to get the word out! We found a high definition version of the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring poster. We spent a couple days in band taking pictures of the band members for their respective characters. Once those pictures were taken, 15-20 hours of work was spent editing the faces.
Looking back, it could have taken a lot less time. I was quite happy with the result, though! The concert went fantastically well. My director says no concert of theirs will ever surpass it. To put it in his words... "THAT. WAS. PHENOMENAL!!"
Best Wishes! -Richie
