From The Video Honoree’s Perspective

I asked my friend, Vicki Samuels Levy to write me a brief perspective on her experience as a video honoree in one of my Legacy Multimedia productions. After all, I write a lot from my perspective; what I’m trying to do with the video, the feelings that I want my audience to experience. I usually get a nice note from my clients and they often agree to allow me to use it as a website testimonial. So I was thrilled when a few hours later, Vicki sent me two pages of writing from her experience. It really made my day, in fact my week, to hear what a positive experience making the video was for her and her family. You tell me what you think.

When the leadership at American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev approached our family in 2013 about honoring the three generations at our newspaper, the Jewish Herald-Voice, we were overwhelmingly flattered.

At the same time, we were relieved that a tribute video to our family would not be created. After all, we quietly get the paper out each week, and work overtime to create five annual magazines. However, something changed in AABGU’s planning process, and we were notified that we had to do a video for the gala dinner.

Grumbling under our breaths, we thought, “Really?!” After all, we’ve all seen tribute videos at fundraising dinners. They are lovely and everyone looks so polished. How could we meet those standards? Furthermore, with our weekly and multiple deadlines, we rarely have a chance to clean up the place. And, the best place to capture our essence is in our office.

We also wrestled with finding the time to think about what we would say. Ultimately, out of the five in our family being honored, four acquiesced to being interviewed. So, Stefani Twyford, working with AABGU’s Deborah Bergeron, and with our input, put together an outline of how the interviews would go.

I think Stefani Twyford had a monumental task – probably greater than any of her other projects. Not only did her crew have to schlep up (and down) a flight of stairs, but they had to set up their lighting and equipment, not two times, not three, but six times! So, one weekend, we cleared our desks, dusted, and straightened our collars.

I was the first to go under the lights. While I wasn’t nervous, I suddenly was at a loss for words for what this great honor meant to me and how important AABGU, especially its Cyber-Security Institute, was to the State of Israel, the Houston Jewish community, and really the world. The crew was so patient and laughed with me when I struggled for words. I couldn’t imagine that anything I said would be usable in the video.

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