Bclip Productions won a Silver Telly award this year - the organization’s highest honor. The movie folks have the Oscars®, the TV guys have the Emmy’s®, and the rest of the video world has the Telly’s. It is our first real award, and frankly the first time we’ve ever entered anything. And here is the story of our victory.

Last spring one of our oldest and truest clients came to us with a challenge. It was our friend, Karl Alexander. Karl is the owner and operator of Camp Highlander, a boys and girls summer camp located in Mills River, NC. We’ve been doing camp videos for Karl since 2003, and each year we push ourselves to make the new video better than the year before. But last year was a little different. Camp Highlander is a member of the American Camp Association. Karl had been to the organization’s annual conference and viewed all of the videos from each camp from around the country. He told us that his video was up there with the best, but there was one that was better. And he wanted to beat it.

It was on.

With pride on the line, we launched into action with pre-production in April. Now in the past we have been known to operate a run and gun style of camp video for Karl. He would bring us out to camp and we would chase him all over creation shooting whatever was happening that day.

Not this time.

Organization, planning, and creativity were the rules that we lived by. We sat down with Karl and his step-daughter Melissa Fitzgerald, the Camp Director, and laid out our grand scheme. We selected our music tracks. We crafted our script. We cast our characters – the staff, counselors and campers. We identified exactly what shots would drive the spirit of the video. And then filming began.

Through our pre-production and planning efforts, every activity was organized for the video. Our calendar had us shooting multiple days throughout the summer – climbing the Blue Ridge, hiking beneath waterfalls, and skimming across mountain lakes. The footage was beautiful - from campfire silhouettes to riding horseback at magic hour. Our resources were in place for a very special video. It was time to move the project into the edit bay.

Michael McSwain was up to the task. With clear direction, and a creative plan in place, McSwain began to build the vision. Music tracks were edited specifically to emphasize action and emotion. Our shots were inserted to tell the story and bring the viewer into the essence of Highlander. After bringing Karl in for final approval (and giving him chills) the video was ready to go to work.

And work it did.

Karl and Melissa showed this video in homes all across the country. We happened to talk to one of the families present at one of the “Camp Highlander Parties.” Not only did the kids want to go to camp… mom and dad wanted to go with them. And so our most important goal was realized – to create an effective and successful video for Camp Highlander. The bonus would come later.

We entered the video in the 2009 Telly Awards in November of 2008 – it’s cheaper if you do early registration. And for three months we waited. By February I had assumed that we didn’t win anything, but hadn’t received any notification. Then I received an email stating that our results were in the mail and would arrive within five business days. I returned from lunch one day to find an envelope sitting on my desk. It was from the Telly Awards. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened the envelop. I recall reading the words, “congratulations… Bclip Productions… Camp Highlander.”

Now our Asheville studios have no ceilings and no doors. So when someone yells something out very loudly, it gets noticed. I received a few inquiries as to my exclamation, to which I responded, “Bclip Productions has just won its first Telly Award!” After much hugging and high-fiving and “you’re the man, no YOU’RE the man,” we called Karl. Believe it or not, he was at the same conference where this whole thing started a year ago. And he was going to make sure that everyone there new that his camp video was the best one in the country – officially.

Founded in 1978, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, interactive agencies, and corporate video departments in the world. The Telly Awards receives over 13,000 entries annually from all 50 states and countries around the world.

The judges rate each entry on a 100-point scale. Generally, entries with a score from the judges of 90 or higher are awarded a “Silver Telly” statuette, the highest honor. When you consider that entrants submit only their very best work as well as the extremely high number of entrants, earning a Telly Award is a significant creative achievement. Based on the ratio of winners over the past several years, approximately 7 to 10% of entries are chosen as Silver Telly Award winners.

And now we have one.

And we’re ready for more.