Operation Music Storm was such a hit (with both the students and the professors) that I decided to make a sequel. I started around December of '05, I believe. I was the start of finals week, when things were calm. I did a bunch of planning, shot a few scenes, then got hit hard by finals. Production screeched to a halt and sadly, the project went into hibernation.
In Fall of '06 (almost a year later) I bought a MacBook, which I absolutely love. As you already know, Macs come with a bundle of software Apple has named iLife, which includes iMovie. Some history to understand the significance of that fact... When I made the original Operation Music Storm video, I assembled it with Microsoft PowerPoint. At the time I was using the IBM ThinkPad laptop provided by my college, which wasn't exactly designed with video production in mind. I clicked through the slides, recorded the screen via the S-Video output onto a VCR, and voila, a movie. Phase two took place over my next long break, when I used my dad's Mac with Final Cut. (the holy grail of video editing suites) I re-pieced it together from the individual powerpoint slides, re-synced it with the music, then exported it as the quicktime movie you can currently download. I swore I would never go through that nightmare again. Enter: MacBook.
This time I had the tools necessary to do it correctly from the very beginning. I used OpenOffice.org's Impress (essentially PowerPoint) to make the speech bubbles, much like last time, exported the slide as an image, then threw it directly into iMovie as a still video clip. The end result: a cleaner version with less headache, tighter audio/visual synchronization, a few special effects, and multiple downloadable versions.
With graduation looming, I realized I was rapidly running out of time. I revised the script after consulting with several people (including several faculty members), got close to 100% cooperation/involvement with the professors I asked to be involved, fired up my camera and got to work. (Again, during finals week.)
After a solid (and I mean solid) week of manic activity, I emerged victorious from the scraps of trimmed footage, clutching a 20 minute DVD in my hand. A recital hall packed with enthusiastic students and faculty watched as 12 professors were captured, two classrooms of students were liberated, (along with the College Choir, a piano student, and the library) and the CFA head honcho was revealed.
And now, the moment you've been waiting for... ~20 minutes. Version 1 is for people with slow internet. Version 2 is the best quality (obviously). Version 3 exists solely because I could. Version 4 is between 1 and 2 in quality (much closer to 2 than 1) but you need a divx player.