High school filmmakers record Washington

    A couple of young documentarians are filming a video to promote the city of Washington. The two are Alex Thode and Brock Kimball, both juniors at the Washington High School. They are producing the film on behalf of the Washington Chamber of Commerce, and will upload the video to the chamber?s website and to Youtube before year?s end. Alex is the son of Veta and Mark Thode while Brock is the son of Brad and Julia Kimball.

    ?We want people to come to Washington,? said Thode. ?We?re directing it towards younger families to move to Washington and live their lives in this town.?

    The filmmakers said the movie will feature parts of Washington that will attract not just day-visitors but future residents as well.    

?We?ll probably film a lot of buildings, but we?ll film events as well,? said Thode. ?We?re trying to give viewers an idea of what Washington has to offer, such as schools and housing.?

    One event the boys recently filmed was the Craft Show in Central Park last Saturday. The park was alive with merchants and shoppers bustling about, and it was all captured on video. Thode and Kimball said they chose not to appear in the Craft Show segment, and will likely not be shown at all in the finished product. 

    ?We don?t know if we?re going to narrate it,? said Thode. ?We want the film to speak for itself.?

    Thode added that they will probably add background music during the editing stage. He said that a handful of community leaders will be featured in the film, and at other times the camera will be focused on buildings or the town?s landscape.

?We?re going to interview some business owners, but some parts of the film will just be scenery,? said Thode.

    The Chamber of Commerce hatched the idea of a promotional video during a planning retreat of the Visitors and Tourism Committee. Veta Thode, Alex?s mother and a member of the chamber board, asked her son if he would like to do the project, and he agreed. Thode and Kimball said the chamber has given them suggestions, but has left most of the decisions over content in their hands.

    ?The chamber wants us to do our own thing and provide our own perspective of Washington,? said Thode. ?They give us a few guidelines, but we decide what is filmed.?

Kimball said they have a list of locations they?re going to film, and that they will do most of their recording while the weather is nice.

?We might do a little filming in the winter, but for the most part, we want to get into the editing portion by the time winter arrives,? said Kimball.

    Thode remarked that he and Kimball may make several videos of 3 to 5 minutes in length. Each video would showcase a distinct area of interest to potential Washingtonians.

For more, see our Sept. 13 print edition.