Alas, spring break is over. This year’s spring break was a busy one for me. For the past seventeen years, I’ve been involved with Camp Periwinkle at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. It’s a camp for childhood cancer patients and their siblings. It lasts a week and no expense is spared to create the ultimate camp for these kids who want nothing more than to feel normal and do normal things despite being fragile, bald and swollen with chemo drugs. It doesn’t cost a dime for the kids to go and we roll out the red carpet. My main duty at camp is to do the video production work. This includes training videos, cabin skit videos, some promo work, but mainly a yearbook video. So most of spring break was spent editing our footage from last year’s camp. Usually I’m finished by now so spring breaks are typically spent cycling and goofing off, but a catastrophic hard drive failure on the video editing system left me starting over again about a month ago. So I spent spring break mainly watching kids have fun last summer. It’s cool to see those smiling faces having a rare good time. I laugh with them and the editing goes more quickly and I don’t mind not being outside on gorgeous days. I’m reminded that I can reasonably expect many more. Suddenly spring break ends, and I’m back at work. This year it was different than in previous years. I was actually happy to be back, although I really could use another week to edit.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
Video editing is one of the most thankless and important jobs in making a film, topped in tedium only by transcribing interviews for research. Hope the finished product was worth it.
It is thankless, but it’s also very satisfying. When you’re finished. Thanks for you wishes; I’m sure it will go over well. It usually does.
[…] Weekend in Houston Last weekend we went to Houston for the Periwinkle Foundation’s fundraising gala. Periwinkle provides a free summer camp for childhood cancer patients and their siblings and is truly instrumental in helping kids survive cancer. I’ve been involved with Periwinkle for seventeen years so we decided to chip in with some friends from camp and purchase a table at the gala. It was also a nice break from editing their video, which I am still working on. […]
[…] chip in with some friends from camp and purchase a table at the gala. It was also a nice break from editing their video, which I am still working […]