UTD Symposium 1.0 report
I figured that besides AG video blogging like crazy some people might enjoy good old written word about our Symposium 1.0.
As most of you probably noticed, from bits of information flying around, primary goal, we had in mind, was to shoot videos for majority of our classes. Current videos are all coming from pre-UTD days and quite often are outdated and for some of our new programs don't even exist (RB). Rather than trying to fix only obsolete ones we decided to get all of them in one go, in a consistent manner, across all training levels. We will be also taking a fresh look at editing techniques to enhance the educational value.
Since we had all those people in a same place for 4 days we also scheduled time to sit together and talk about UTD and try to sum up what we achieved in last 10 months and set new goals for the organization.
Ambitious goal, lets see how it went.
Day 0 Tuesday:
Most of crew members arrived to Catalina. Day was spent mostly unloading gear and making everything ready for Day 1. Some preliminary footage was shot in a water to make sure we have all our ducks in order. Day was wrapped up with meeting where we set the baseline for discussions in following days.
Day 1 Wednesday
All crew members arrived to Catalina. After setting up all the gear at Casino Point, we started the day with small meeting distributing work among 3 video teams. Each team consisted of camera operator, two actors and note taker or "director". We were also handed notebooks with all skills we need to shoot itemized. After 4th page we were scratching our heads wondering how the hell will we manage to even do half of it...
I was serving as a note taker on recreational team, with part time cameraman duties (due to certain someone forgetting his drysuit). We broke down each skill into important items we want to emphasize and dry run it first, then we splashed in a water and begun to film. It's truly amazing how much work and fine tuning it takes to shoot a good training video. Not only skill has to be performed flawlessly and slowly, but also camera angle needs to be proper to enhance important steps. Add to this a slight current, moderate surge and changes in lightning (fog) and simple thing like regulator exchange becomes a grueling repetition to get all items right. After 6 takes and still feeling that we need to shoot it again, we were convinced that there will be no chance to finish our plate in 4 days.
We did 3 dives that day barely making a dent in a list. After sitting together to review material in the evening our usable footage list seemed very insignificant. We definitely felt task is impossible to achieve. Each team was pretty much in a same shoes. A shadow of the doubt was upon us.
Day 2 Thursday
We woke up early and started day in much more streamlined fashion than day 1. Chasing our tail on Day 1 definitely payed back - we were very clear on what and how needs to be achieved and all of us had a good idea how things will turn out on a material afterward. After round of dry runs we splashed and started filming.
1st dive we spent redoing skills we deemed unworthy in a review the previous evening. We also moved to use 2 cameras which proved to reduce amount of time to get that ideal angle. 4 dives later we were famished, tired, cold, wet, but we also had quite a significant amount of footage with decent quality. Evening review confirmed that most of it meets the bar and we only need to sacrifice one dive next day to catch up. Other teams did similarly well and between arguments and heated discussion most of the material was accepted as sufficiently good. We were in a good moods before day 3.
We spent remainder of the evening discussing UTD future and upcoming developments. It was truly amazing to remember first IDC from last November, when agency wasn't even officially started yet, and compare how far we are today, how we grow and progress. Hard to believe it is just 8 months since we officially started teaching.
We wrapped the day with Jeanna birthday celebration, which lasted a little longer than planned :).
Day 3 Friday
Since everyone had good understanding of how things should look we decided to divide into 4 smaller groups (sans "director") to maximize camera coverage and rearrange distribution of work a little to catch up in a certain areas. It was another productive day for all teams and our moods were up until video review in the evening when it turned out that all our Tech footage for the day can be thrown out to trash due to fingerprint on a lens which somehow managed to stay unnoticed. Whole camera/day will need to be redone.
We gathered again in the evening to discuss strategy in developing UTD further. Agenda was full with discussions about logo, polishing training materials and development process for new instructors. It was again very productive and we will be implementing some new ideas over next few months to make education through UTD even more easy and comprehensive.
Day 4 Saturday, last day of the shoot.
While on previous days we pretty much had Casino Point to ourselves it quickly becomes a typical Casino Point weekend with over 200 people crowding stairs and a park. We also have casualties - inflamed tendon and clogged sinuses eliminate two of our crew - we are down to 3 teams again. We splash again to face additional challenge of finding a spot which is clear of people. Amazingly all teams manage to navigate around classes without much of the hassle and we do wrap up as planned. Last two dives we sacrificed to shooting rescue videos - not a single soul in a park seemed to notice 4th take of "panicked diver on a surface" :).
We wrapped up another long day at around 4pm and after packing all the gear for transportation the next day headed back to our condo. After video review we wrapped up Symposium with a well deserved dinner in one of the posh restaurants on the island.
Day 5 Sunday
All crew heads back home. Everything has to come to an end. It was a ton of work but it was also a ton of fun. We all headed back to the mainland to lick our wounds. We have clear direction for agency in upcoming months. We have ton of great footage, we still need to edit it into actual videos (we = Jeff). And it felt great to be a part of the project with such an excellent team.
We owe huge thanks to Sarah Bullion and Ocean Adventures who helped us with all gear transfers and Catalina Divers Supply which was our support base while on the island.
Next Symposium in 2010 :).
As most of you probably noticed, from bits of information flying around, primary goal, we had in mind, was to shoot videos for majority of our classes. Current videos are all coming from pre-UTD days and quite often are outdated and for some of our new programs don't even exist (RB). Rather than trying to fix only obsolete ones we decided to get all of them in one go, in a consistent manner, across all training levels. We will be also taking a fresh look at editing techniques to enhance the educational value.
Since we had all those people in a same place for 4 days we also scheduled time to sit together and talk about UTD and try to sum up what we achieved in last 10 months and set new goals for the organization.
Ambitious goal, lets see how it went.
Day 0 Tuesday:
Most of crew members arrived to Catalina. Day was spent mostly unloading gear and making everything ready for Day 1. Some preliminary footage was shot in a water to make sure we have all our ducks in order. Day was wrapped up with meeting where we set the baseline for discussions in following days.
Day 1 Wednesday
All crew members arrived to Catalina. After setting up all the gear at Casino Point, we started the day with small meeting distributing work among 3 video teams. Each team consisted of camera operator, two actors and note taker or "director". We were also handed notebooks with all skills we need to shoot itemized. After 4th page we were scratching our heads wondering how the hell will we manage to even do half of it...
I was serving as a note taker on recreational team, with part time cameraman duties (due to certain someone forgetting his drysuit). We broke down each skill into important items we want to emphasize and dry run it first, then we splashed in a water and begun to film. It's truly amazing how much work and fine tuning it takes to shoot a good training video. Not only skill has to be performed flawlessly and slowly, but also camera angle needs to be proper to enhance important steps. Add to this a slight current, moderate surge and changes in lightning (fog) and simple thing like regulator exchange becomes a grueling repetition to get all items right. After 6 takes and still feeling that we need to shoot it again, we were convinced that there will be no chance to finish our plate in 4 days.
We did 3 dives that day barely making a dent in a list. After sitting together to review material in the evening our usable footage list seemed very insignificant. We definitely felt task is impossible to achieve. Each team was pretty much in a same shoes. A shadow of the doubt was upon us.
Day 2 Thursday
We woke up early and started day in much more streamlined fashion than day 1. Chasing our tail on Day 1 definitely payed back - we were very clear on what and how needs to be achieved and all of us had a good idea how things will turn out on a material afterward. After round of dry runs we splashed and started filming.
1st dive we spent redoing skills we deemed unworthy in a review the previous evening. We also moved to use 2 cameras which proved to reduce amount of time to get that ideal angle. 4 dives later we were famished, tired, cold, wet, but we also had quite a significant amount of footage with decent quality. Evening review confirmed that most of it meets the bar and we only need to sacrifice one dive next day to catch up. Other teams did similarly well and between arguments and heated discussion most of the material was accepted as sufficiently good. We were in a good moods before day 3.
We spent remainder of the evening discussing UTD future and upcoming developments. It was truly amazing to remember first IDC from last November, when agency wasn't even officially started yet, and compare how far we are today, how we grow and progress. Hard to believe it is just 8 months since we officially started teaching.
We wrapped the day with Jeanna birthday celebration, which lasted a little longer than planned :).
Day 3 Friday
Since everyone had good understanding of how things should look we decided to divide into 4 smaller groups (sans "director") to maximize camera coverage and rearrange distribution of work a little to catch up in a certain areas. It was another productive day for all teams and our moods were up until video review in the evening when it turned out that all our Tech footage for the day can be thrown out to trash due to fingerprint on a lens which somehow managed to stay unnoticed. Whole camera/day will need to be redone.
We gathered again in the evening to discuss strategy in developing UTD further. Agenda was full with discussions about logo, polishing training materials and development process for new instructors. It was again very productive and we will be implementing some new ideas over next few months to make education through UTD even more easy and comprehensive.
Day 4 Saturday, last day of the shoot.
While on previous days we pretty much had Casino Point to ourselves it quickly becomes a typical Casino Point weekend with over 200 people crowding stairs and a park. We also have casualties - inflamed tendon and clogged sinuses eliminate two of our crew - we are down to 3 teams again. We splash again to face additional challenge of finding a spot which is clear of people. Amazingly all teams manage to navigate around classes without much of the hassle and we do wrap up as planned. Last two dives we sacrificed to shooting rescue videos - not a single soul in a park seemed to notice 4th take of "panicked diver on a surface" :).
We wrapped up another long day at around 4pm and after packing all the gear for transportation the next day headed back to our condo. After video review we wrapped up Symposium with a well deserved dinner in one of the posh restaurants on the island.
Day 5 Sunday
All crew heads back home. Everything has to come to an end. It was a ton of work but it was also a ton of fun. We all headed back to the mainland to lick our wounds. We have clear direction for agency in upcoming months. We have ton of great footage, we still need to edit it into actual videos (we = Jeff). And it felt great to be a part of the project with such an excellent team.
We owe huge thanks to Sarah Bullion and Ocean Adventures who helped us with all gear transfers and Catalina Divers Supply which was our support base while on the island.
Next Symposium in 2010 :).
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Marc Blackwood on -
we = Jeff
I love it.
So I suppose I shouldn't be calling Mr. Seckendorf for like the next 6 months?
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Permalink Reply by Brian Wiederspan on -
Awesome report, Maciek.
It was an incredible experience to be a part of. We got thumped on day 1 (I think it was Todd who said it best on night 1 when he said "I just yesterday recovered from the IDC last December and now I have this"), and every person on the team did what was needed to turn it around. We discussed the mistakes, failures, what worked, what didn't work and what needed to be fixed and how to fix it, and everyone stepped up and turned it around on days 2, 3 and 4. Everyone "kicked it in the ass" (THE quote of Symposium 1.0).
Day 3 everyone was starting to feel a bit tired and sore. Every day we were in the water by 8am, out at 4pm, then dinner/video review til 7pm or so, then meetings/discussions until 930pm. Then, strategize for the next day. They were long, but rewarding days. Day 4 we lost a couple of divers to the disabled list, though they still provided much needed shore support. Everyone was visibly tired and beat, but all still had smiles, and the jokes continued as well as the focus on getting the job done.
What I especially like is we did these videos in "real world" conditions, and we had to adapt to whatever it threw at us. The current and surge were constant. It was certainly a challenge, but the payoff was well worth it and I have no doubt the final product will be the best training videos available.
We couldn't have had a better team to do this. Every person did a magnificent job. It was really cool seeing everyone operating on all cylinders, with everyone on the same page, working toward the same goal.
It's going to be a very exciting year for UTD. We had a lot of really productive (and sometimes heated) discussions with a lot of exciting developments coming and we have a lot of great footage for the new dvd's.
It was really cool seeing the instructor's from the first IDC again, as well as meeting George and Don, UTD's newest North American instructors.
A HUGE thanks to Nick Ambrose, Kim Cardenas and Kathryn King for spending 4 long days helping to get this project done and to Catalina Divers Supply for all the support they provided us. Also, a huge thank you to Andrew and Jeff, for the planning of this project. It was a logistical nightmare that was perfectly executed.
I can't wait for 2.0
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Permalink Reply by Nick Ambrose on -
I just wanted to add a couple of things also :)
It was awesome to see so many people from different backgrounds all coming together in such a co-ordinated manner with the single goal of obtaining the best video possible to make the training materials.
Also, was great to meet everyone finally, without exception every person involved was super-friendly & passionate about teaching
And a huge thanks to Mr Todd Powell and Kim who, after hearing that an entire day of footage was lost due to a fingerprint on lens that was not viewable in the LCD, got right back in the water (for 6 hours!) on the final day to redo the entire previous days footage without a single complaint (well, at least not that I could hear :)
A very fun project all in all!
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Permalink Reply by Lynne Flaherty on -
Did you guys redo any of the overhead protocols videos? They need redoing, because it's almost impossible to see what the divers are doing in the small class format.
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Permalink Reply by Nicole Tebaldi on -
Thanks for the recap, Maciek! Looking forward to seeing the videos....cause I'm sure I'll be in another class somewhat soon! :)
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Permalink Reply by Don Chennavasin on -
Awesome report, Maciek. You kicked it in the ass!
It was really great to meet the other instructors and feel everyone's enthusiasm for diving and dive instruction.
James and Kat were a pleasure to dive with. Sure we got some good video, but the time in the water was always amusing and infinitely funny. I still laugh when I think of Kat's fake blooper - a regulator is forcibly yanked out of your mouth and yet you hang there motionless in the water as if nothing happened. Or the time when both you guys kept stealing each other's masks so the entire team was maskless. Or James' many demonstration quality p-valve usages. I'm crossing my finger that they'll make the drysuit skills video series.
Now, gathering is never over until we give out awards:
* "The Hans Solo" award goes to Todd. Significant Day 4 sacrifice of mind and body for the team.
* "Happiest Person Gearing Up" award goes to Gina. Always smiling and always looking good.
* "Best Regulator Removal" award goes to Maciek. Tongue, baby.
Many thanks to Kat, Kim, and Nick for all the great diving and filming during the 4 days. You guys know that we couldn't have done it without you. And we definitely wouldn't have as much fun or thought provoking conversation if you didn't join us.
Much appreciation to the crew at Catalina Divers Supply, they really were great group to work with and really helped us out throughout.
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Permalink Reply by Don Chennavasin on
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Not sure, Jeff will have to answer this.
Our team was supposed to do line work, but with me out of the water on the last day, the team opted for communication and drysuit skills.
Lynne Flaherty said:Did you guys redo any of the overhead protocols videos? They need redoing, because it's almost impossible to see what the divers are doing in the small class format.
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Permalink Reply by George K. Watson on -
The entire event was great, hard-working fun. I had been especially keen to meet the other NA instructors and that was certainly a treat. The conditions were sometimes challenging and never optimal, but we managed to accomplish a huge amount in a short period of time. I look forward to seeing everyone again soon!
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