The Image Company :: Video, Print and Web Design
 Operation Uruguay
The Image Company on a Video Shoot in South America One of our recent video projects took us to Uruguay for a week with Key Club International and UNICEF. Our assignment was to document Operation Uruguay, the journey of four Key Club Ambassadors as they witnessed first hand the work of UNICEF Uruguay that their 2009 fundraising would support.
For those of you not so familiar with Uruguay, it is located on the Atlantic side of South America, south of Brazil; in fact it’s so far south that it was winter time when we were down there in early June. The population is about 3.5 million with more than half of the people living in the capital city, Montevideo (Mon-teh-vi-DAY-oh). Montevideo feels like any American city of that size, and that’s where we were most of the time. But we did manage to venture out of the city a few times where it felt sort of like Southwest Georgia decades ago. 
My sound man, Frank Mills, and I followed the four teenage ambassadors, along with Key Club Director, Mike Downs and a UNICEF Director, Kristi Burnham, video taping as they spent time with Uruguayan teens.
 In a town about 45 minutes northwest of Montevideo we visited Mandala Vos, a center for teens where learning and the arts were the focus of social interaction. They even had a video program for the kids where they could kick around ideas and storyboard a script before going out to shoot, using a Camcorder, then edit on some basic program like Movie Maker, I believe. The kids were the producers, writers, directors, actors, graphic artists and editors, winning an award in a local contest for one production.
I was shooting on our Sony DSR300 and managed to not fry any of our batteries or lights when plugging in to Uruguay’s 240 volt current. A little research and the purchase of a converter before we left ensured that we were prepared to keep our equipment functioning and safe. Back in our studio in Southwest Georgia we edited the photos and footage in Media 100, incorporating additional photos provided by UNICEF Uruguay. 
 Our focus, aside from taking photographs for the fall issue of Key Club Magazine, was to create an 8-9 minute video which would establish the need and purpose for the programs benefiting the kids in Uruguay. Key Club teens will then use this DVD as they fundraise in partnership with UNICEF.
Key Club, with about 250,000 members, exists on more than 5,000 high school campuses, primarily in the United States and Canada. UNICEF plans to insert the finished DVD into all the fundraising kits that Key Clubbers and their younger counter parts receive. That's almost 7000 fundraising kits. The video will also be used during Key Club’s 66th Annual Key Club International Convention in Dallas, Texas on July 1st-4th.
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