Earlier this month, I completed the George L. Carter Train Museum promotional project with the Virtual Tour podcast series. After reviewing literally hours of footage, it seemed to me that the only way to tackle this project would be to categorize the footage and split it into smaller projects. The original intent was to create a 30 minute and a 90 to 120 minute documentary, but, to me at least, I just didn’t see enough “glue” there to hold together that long of a narrative. The plan then became to cut a short promotional piece for the museum, a series of virtual tour podcasts, and, later, a short documentary on the George L. Carter, himself, and the pivotal role he played in the establishment of a normal, or teacher training, school that would later become ETSU.
Consequently, after organizing the nearly 50 GBs of footage and cutting the short promo, this was the first of the 3 part virtual tour of the museum hosted by former ETSU Broadcasting student Kodi Ledford. In this opening episode Ledford meets with museum director and ETSU professor Dr. Fred Alsop as he introduces the audience to George L. Carter and some of the exhibits in the museum. The second episode introduces Mountain Empire Model Railroader members Jessee Kittle and David Dowdy, who proceed to introduce the audience to the children’s room and provide further backstory on specific elements of the exhibits. The final episode chronicles the surprise visit of ETSU president Dr. Paul Stanton to the museum. The other two episodes are currently available on iTunes in ETSU’s iTunesU library.
As to the credits, filming was provided by Jason Jones, Josh Elliott, David Currie, Andrew Simmons of the Office of eLearning and myself. Onscreen talent includes host Kodi Ledford, museum director Dr. Fred Alsop, Jessee Kittle, David Dowdy, ETSU president Dr. Paul Stanton, and various other members of the Mountain Empire Model Railroaders. Additionally, I was assisted in the editing and organization of the footage by Andrew Simmons. All other post-production duties were completed by myself with Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Audition, Cinema 4D, and SonicFire Pro.