Photo By Lt.Cmdr. Jim Remington | Patrons of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, who...... read more read more
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By Lt. Cmdr. Jim Remington
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling Public Affairs
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The United States Air Force Band surprised a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum audience for the second year in row Tuesday Dec. 2 with its holiday music “flash mob” at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, the video of which has already reached more than 300 thousand views on YouTube.
Technical Sgt. Emily Snyder, a native of Newark, Delaware, kicked off the surprise with an English horn solo introduction to “Greensleeves” while emerging from the crowd alongside Space Shuttle Discovery before more than 100 of her fellow musicians and vocalists from the band joined her in front of the shuttle coming from hidden positions within the crowd itself. The band then transitioned seamlessly into a performance of “What Child Is This.”
Guests present at the Udvar-Hazy Center familiar with the Air Force Band’s prior year flash mob might have thought this was it, but the band outdid itself with surprises by introducing an unexpected second flash mob within the first. Upon an energetic finish, percussionists and a brass ensemble staged on catwalks between Space Shuttle Discovery and the museum’s SR-71 Blackbird, kicked into an instrumental bridge while band members hastily scattered and then reassembled in the main hangar to perform “Carol of the Bells.”
Origin of the band’s flash mob
The kernel of an idea, which has now become two very successful Air Force Band flash mobs, originated from the band’s production chief, Chief Master Sgt. Jebodiah J. Eaton who is originally from Hutchinson, Kansas. The idea came to him through a personal interest in flash mobs, and a bit of innovative thinking and creative problem solving in response to fiscal constraints of the 2013 sequestration period.
“I enjoy watching flash mobs on YouTube. So I was just checking them out and couldn’t help but notice that no military band had ever done it. And I started thinking about that concept. And then sequestration hit and I had no money to do our holiday show which is normally a large dollar production.
So this was my suggestion to the commander for an alternative. And that’s really all it was. It was never supposed to be all of this,” said Eaton. “I was happy the day that I finished editing the video and sent the link to my parents.
I had no aspirations what so ever that it was going to go that big. So I was pleasantly surprised.”
“Master Sgt. Jebodiah J. Eaton is our production chief and it was his concept to do a flash mob,” said Col. Larry H. Lang, commander and conductor of The United States Air Force Band and native of El Paso, Texas. “But it was a team of people who figured out the best way to do it, the best place to do it, and the right music and all that goes into it.”
Eaton’s original idea, brought to life through the massive team effort within the band, resulted in the greatest number of hits on a military YouTube video ever.
“It was all out of sequestration. We were out of money and didn’t have any way to advertise our concerts. So we said, ‘We’ll do this as a way of generating enthusiasm for our concerts.’ And that’s why we did it,” said Lang, “We had no idea it was going to take off the way it did. Thirty million people have seen that video.”
What it took
With such a success last year, work for this year’s flash mob began in earnest this past July. The band selected music and secured performance and sync rights for the music through the publishers. Retired band member Senior Master Sgt. Robert Thurston arranged the music. Individual musicians and sub-elements of the band began to practice and memorize their individual parts, but interestingly there were only four full rehearsals: one in October, two in November, and just one on-site at the Udvar-Hazy Center for two hours on the night prior to the performance.
“We’re not often all together,” said Lang. “We all have separate missions. There are six different flights and they each go their separate ways everyday so it’s not often that we get to come together as an entire squadron.”
The on-site rehearsal the evening prior took longer than expected because of issues posed by the Udvar-Hazy Center’s enormous size and challenging acoustics.
“The largest part was the space. We did a flash mob within a flash mob. That was simply because I wanted to do something once again no one had ever done before,” said Eaton. “The first time it was a military band doing a flash mob. But by this year we’d done that. And now we’ve come to this large space; it’s massive here. We asked, ‘So how do we cover that much real estate?’ So we just started conceiving it, and I settled on, ‘We’re gonna do a flash mob and then we’re going to completely move.’ I’ve never seen that before.”
The video production team’s challenge, aside from trying to meet expectations from last year’s video success, was to successfully capture for the Internet audience, this giant flash mob within a flash mob that moved from one vast hangar to another.
“I’m hoping to successfully translate that. I provided our camera folks shot lists specifically to help us explain to the audience spatially how we started here and transitioned over there,” said Eaton immediately following the event while he was still busily checking each camera’s video. “So that’s what I’m working on the rest of the day, how to communicate that. We’ll see if it happens.”
The soloist who started it off
Snyder, the musician who kicked off this year’s flash mob said, “Col. Lang asked me, ‘How do you feel about starting it off this year?’ And I said, ‘Okay, here we go.’ I feel very honored to start it off this year.”
Snyder, originally from Newark, Delaware, was further esteemed to have in attendance her mother and father, Charlotte and Rocky Snyder, along with her grandmother Lois, all of whom left home bound for Virginia at 7 a.m. that morning to make the noon performance.
“It was so special to see her playing there and leading the crowd, everyone joining in for the team effort. It was definitely worth the traffic involved from Newark, Delaware to Chantilly, Virginia,” said Snyder’s father Rocky. “This was so nice because there was something for everyone. The music selections, the brass, the woodwinds, the singing, the Celtic business at the end were all very nice. This was an excellent production. It really gets you in the mood.”
Snyder’s grandmother Lois said she was incredibly proud of her granddaughter. “She’s prepared for this for a long time, and by that I mean her musical background. And to see her do what she’s doing is wonderful.”
Snyder attended college far from her home in Delaware, studying at the prestigious Rice University in Houston, Texas, from which she graduated in 2013. An accomplished musician, she previously served as principal oboe with the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra and has performed as a soloist with both the Newark Symphony and Kennett Symphony Orchestras. She spent many summers attending some of the world’s most renowned music festivals, including the Tanglewood Institute and the National Repertory Orchestra.
The English horn which Snyder played for this performance is a larger version of the oboe, “It’s pitched a fifth lower in the key of ‘F,’ so it’s a little bit lower range,” said Snyder.
Here to represent the entire U.S. Air Force well
Lang, who appeared energized after the performance, said he thought it went very well and that concerns he and the band had ahead of time, were thankfully proven to be unnecessary worries.
“We were actually a little concerned about getting an audience here because it’s a little more remote than the main Air and Space Museum on the National Mall,” said Lang. “But wow, what a great crowd. We had a beautiful turnout. And this environment was very challenging because the acoustics here are much more reverberant than the other museum. So it took us quite a while, two hours last night, to really lock things in. But we’re happy. I think it turned out really well. And we’ll have a great product up by tomorrow morning.”
Before the flash mob concluded with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” Lang told the audience that he is proud of the role that his band members play in the larger Air Force.
“Our musicians were here to represent all of the United States Air Force today and that’s true each and every time we perform,” Lang told the guests of the museum. “So we do hope that you’ll go online and learn a little bit more about us, and try to come out to some of our other performances very, very soon. We do want to thank the Smithsonian. They are our collaborators today and we couldn’t have done this without them. What a beautiful museum and we hope you’ll stay and enjoy this. I also thank the United States Air Force Honor Guard. They came out with the color guard at the end there and we could not have done this without them either.”
Senior Master Sgt. Robert Kamholz, superintendent of the band’s marketing and outreach office, originally from Lorain, Ohio, and a 1998 graduate of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, said that the band’s innovative use of the flash mob to continue its mission of positive global outreach on behalf of the Air Force during financially austere times is an excellent example of the kind of innovation that is a hallmark of U.S. Air Force history.
“The big thing on our end, from the marketing and public affairs shop, is we were excited about the prospect because we got a chance to tell the Air Force story and represent the Air Force globally for zero cost. The number of people we will reach with this video would take us years of being on the road, going from hotel to hotel, city to city with traditional concerts,” said Kamholz. “Social media has been a big force multiplier for us and the Air Force always touts innovation and technology, just like the flying communities of the Air Force and Navy. So with this we’re able to say that like them we are innovators too, using social media to push that message of the Air Force, at no cost, and much more effectively than we’ve ever done in the history of our organization. So we’re really proud of that fact.”
You Tube success
Last year’s flash mob video garnered millions of views, and this year’s video is on pace to match it. There is a variety of reasons to explain its success, but much credit is owed to the extremely high production quality which is in keeping with the caliber of talent typical of the highly selective military service bands. The production quality is so good that a review of comments on last year’s YouTube video reveals some doubters in the Internet audience remarking that recording such a quality video live is impossible. But The U.S. Air Force Band has proven their doubters wrong, but only with the kind of attention to detail, processes in place, and specialized personnel and equipment that you would find in a professional production company.
The team of videographers that shot this year’s video was assembled to combine talents of musicians and videographers. It was purposefully drawn from band members who are musicians first and then pairing them with video-trained public affairs specialists of Air Force Television and 11th Wing Public Affairs. Together they manned eight cameras for the filming of the final video. Their work was guided by storyboards and shot lists that Eaton drew up based on the musical score.
“We’ve got camera operators who are musicians but they know the music inside and out and they know the instruments inside and out. So I can tell them ‘I need to hear the flutes at this bar,’ and they’re there when they need to be,” said Eaton. “And then I’ve got the pros over at Air Force Television who sent two camera operators as did the pros over at 11th Wing Public Affairs. So I can turn them loose; I can give them vague ideas of the shots and then their skill comes into play because they’re used to capturing large things, that don’t necessarily need to be musical, but they know a sexy shot when they see it. So it’s a synergistic approach. You’re getting the best of all the worlds.”
Eaton added that the band tries to make all of its products genuine. When watching one of their music videos, musicians in the audience will note that if there is a trombone player on screen it matches perfectly to the audio. The band did not use any studio tracks underneath this production. Not only did the production crew keep the recording real, it recorded the audio with more than 44 wireless microphones, to say nothing of those that were wired, and recorded everything onto 64 separate audio tracks allowing an audio engineer to mix the sound to best enhance the audiences’ experience.
“If the harp is shown for example at one particular portion of the video, the audio engineer will turn the harp up in the mix just a little,” said Eaton.
The U.S. Air Force Band’s Holiday Flash Mob video may be viewed at http://www.usafband.af.mil. At time of publication, it has 383,200 views. It may also be downloaded from Defense Video Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) at http://dvidshub.net/r/wuiz25.
| Date Taken: | 12.12.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 12.13.2014 04:18 |
| Story ID: | 150250 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, US |
| Hometown: | EL PASO, TEXAS, US |
| Hometown: | HOUSTON, TEXAS, US |
| Hometown: | HUTCHINSON, KANSAS, US |
| Hometown: | KENT, OHIO, US |
| Hometown: | LORAIN, OHIO, US |
| Hometown: | NEWARK, DELAWARE, US |
| Web Views: | 296 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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