Jeff Collins is a graduate from BYU–Hawaii who won 2015 Multimedia Story of the Year Award by the Associated Collegiate Press in October. His winning video was about BYUH’s cross-country runners who formed a singing group called the Lilikoi Boyz.
Collins’ friend and co-worker at the Ke Alaka‘i, Reid Crickmore, told him about this a cappella group of cross-country runners. “As he was telling me this, I started imagining how awesome it would be to cover this story through a video,” said Collins.
Collins knew a couple of the cross-country runners and knew they had a great sense of humor. He said, “Instead of making this story a serious one, I decided to make it more of a ‘mockumentary’ style. Basically a comical parody of a documentary. The runners’ humor fit the style perfectly.”
Although it was fun, Collins said the hardest part about the video was the sound. “They like to sing in the locker room, which is all covered in tile. With all of them singing, the echoes of the team bounced off the walls. It was way too loud for the camera microphones.” He said it took a long time in post-production to fix the audio.
Collins said with enthusiasm, “The video is a presentation of the runners who are faced with a lot of hard work as they try to balance school and sports, but they still find ways to laugh and have fun.” Being inspired by the runners, Collins said one lesson he learned from doing this video was, “Whatever our challenges might be, we need to remember to make time for fun.”
After hearing that he won the national competition, Collins said he was really surprised because he knew there were some big colleges with great news programs that entered this competition. “When I heard I won, it was a great honor. I owe all my success to Sister Lambert and the Ke Alaka‘i,” said Collins.
Now that Collins is graduated from BYUH, he is using his degree to do marketing for a trampoline business. “I still get to do a lot of video work, which is really what I love doing. It’s neat to think that my experience from working at BYU–Hawaii was just as relevant and useful in the workplace as the classes I took.”
The video –“Lilikoi Boyz - Cross Country Team Music Group” can be watched on YouTube on the Ke Alaka‘i News channel by clicking here.