We’ve done some projects with the various colleges at Northeastern University, but we do the most work directly for their marketing department, Northeastern Films. Four years ago they hired me as a freelancer to shoot commencement and I’ve shot many events and pieces for them since.
Every year they create an entertaining video for commencement revolving around the President of the school, Joseph E. Aoun and this year’s took it to another level. The team there, Benjamin Bertsch and Adam Fischer came up with a concept where the President would need to parkour his way to the graduation ceremony.
They hired a professional Parkour athlete, Dominic Chavez from Parkour Generations Boston and dressed him up as the president. Along with myself they hired 2 other freelancers who are routinely on the path8 team- Chris Shannis and Evan Patten from Drones.Up.
The team from NU and Parkour Generations did a walk through before the shoot to figure out the best places around campus to showcase Dom’s Parkour skills. We all did a practice shoot the day before the actual shoot to test out the angles with each stunt and see what worked and didn’t. When it came to shoot day everything fell into place seamlessly.
The two stunts that were the most treacherous were a high jump off a balcony and a series of jumps on 6 inch wide planks with a 20 foot drop-off on the side. It was pretty amazing watching Dom work and we had a great time filming.
Benjamin and Adam did a separate shoot with President Aoun to get the lead in and close of the video and some cutaways to sell the effect. They did a great job on the edit, cutting together all of the various angles- we had up to 8 or 9 on some shots. The final piece really came together well. It debuted at commencement to a great reaction!
