February 1, 2013

She sings! She dances! (Well, she tries.)

Posted in Fitness, Motivation, Nutrition tagged Beachbody, contest, dancing, Facebook, Shakeology, Shakeolywood, singing, The Sound of Music, vote at 2:30 PM by Kathleen Strecker

Admit it, you’ve fantasized being able to sing and dance like Julie Andrews. Or Gene Kelly. Beyonce. Justin Timberlake. Neil Patrick Harris – whoever.

Well, I actually did something about it. And now it’s out there for the world to see – and I’m (unbelievably) ASKING you to view it.

It all started about 10 or 12 years ago, when I was out at karaoke one night with my husband Tom and a couple of friends. We had gotten bored with the regular karaoke scene, so we had started playing “scaryoke” – where you let someone else submit the songs for you to sing, and you don’t know what is coming up until the music starts. It was my turn, and they handed me the mike … and on the screen appeared “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music.”

Understand, I typically sang things like “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” or “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” – songs that didn’t require a lot of vocal gymnastics. I’m a decent musician but definitely not a singer. This was WAAAYYYY out of my range – and my league.

I killed it.

I have no idea how, or why – but it turns out I can do a pretty damn good Julie Andrews. I was even being facetious with the veddy British pronunciations and all. So it kind of became one of my standards.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. Tom and I had gotten word of a video contest going on that was promoting Shakeology (the nutrition drink that we LOVE). We hadn’t thought much about it, until they announced they were going to extend the submission date and they published a couple of the current entries. We watched them, and we thought, “Hm.”

Then we watched the rest of the 50 or so entries, and we agreed, “Yes.” We must do this.

But what to shoot? The contest was looking for a “viral video” – something 2 minutes or shorter that was funny, amazing or entertaining that would showcase Shakeology’s greatness. I don’t even remember what other ideas we batted around briefly before Tom nailed it: Do a parody of “My Favorite Things” with lyrics about Shakeology.

My brain started to reel. Yes, yes, I could definitely write lyrics so clever they would make Rodgers and Hammerstein do a facepalm in their graves – but on the flip side …

I would have to SING IT.

And FILM IT.

And POST IT.

I weighed the pros and cons like Indiana Jones measuring the golden icon vs the bag of sand.

PRO: We could win $2,500.

CON: It would take time to write, storyboard, film and edit. And I would have to sing.

PRO: We would get the word out about Shakeology to more people.

CON: We would have to put a lot of time and effort into garnering Facebook votes. And I would have to sing.

PRO: We’d have fun and a lot of laughs doing a creative project together.

CON: I WOULD HAVE TO SING.

The decision boiled down to one factor: My husband, who can be a needle-sharp critic, had faith in me.

It was on.

It only took about half an hour to write the lyrics. I listed every one of Shakeology’s 70+ ingredients and tried to find sets that would rhyme, or at least scan. None did. But I worked them around until I was happy.

Then I dug out my music computer and hooked it up to record the audio. I downloaded a karaoke version of the song and edited it to fit the time limit, chopping up and rearranging verses and choruses and modulating keys. I was in the middle of an awful head cold when all this was going down and so my vocal performance was even further from greatness than usual, but I figured I could always re-record it at the last minute if necessary.

We put the finished song on my phone and struck out to start filming in what turned out to be the nicest weather all week – 45 degrees and only a light drizzle. I wanted to approximate some of the iconic locations in “The Sound of Music,” including skipping down a sidewalk, hopping up and down steps, playing in a tree and twirling around on a hillside.

The tree I had in mind was in a park close to our house. It featured a nice sturdy horizontal branch about 6 feet off the ground, with a helpful smaller branch just above like a handrail, but climbing up was a challenge – there were only narrow V’s between upright trunks for me to wedge my feet into. I swung up onto the branch and my shoulder (in my nice P90X zip-up hoodie) took a big smear of rain-soaked moss and lichen off the limb. Blech.

We got the shot we needed – and then I realized I had to get down somehow. I didn’t think it would work to climb down the way I’d come up, and the wet grass below was sloped too steeply to just  jump without risking major ankle injury.

On the opposite side from the camera, at about the same height as the small helpful handrail branch, was another helpful outgrowth pointing the other way. I decided to grab onto both of those, scoot off the branch I was sitting on and hopefully not fall too sharply. I grabbed, I scooted … and amazingly, lowered myself gently and with control all the way to the ground. THANK YOU BEACHBODY WORKOUTS.

There isn’t much else to tell about the rest of the filming … we got done with the outdoor stuff, came home and shot the kitchen scenes, and then it was time to put it all together. Which I was dreading. The last major video I made took me nearly a week of anguish and frustration, dealing with software and uploads and file formats and e-idiocy. But, in a miracle of “perhaps this was meant to be,” it went together smoothly and turned out as well as we could have hoped. From the first push of the “record” button on Tom’s iPad that morning to clicking the “Submit Entry” on the Shakeology page, it took about 6 hours.

I wrestled with the option of re-recording the audio from that moment until the submission deadline had passed. Would a less stuffy nose and some basic digital enhancements to the vocals mean the difference between making the finals or not? Other entrants had submitted more than one version of their video – should I? Would the panel selecting the finalists be that attuned to minor variances in musical quality?

We had to wait one full day after the entry period closed until the Top 10 would be posted for the public to vote on. The judges were picking the finalists based 50% on content (oh yeah, we had a lock on that) and 50% on technical quality (errrrrr…). In our educated opinions, there were probably 10 other entries out of 60 we figured had a chance … and the rest SU-HUCKED. Sucked rhino, man. (Notice I’m not saying which of those did or didn’t make the cut?)

I woke up an hour before the Top 10 were set to be posted, and wrestled with my dilemma. Did I really WANT to make it? Of course – there was prize money to be won, exposure for our business to be had, and excitement to be experienced! Did I want to spend the next eight days on Facebook, begging for votes? … Not really. I had helped the Oregon Crusaders Drum & Bugle Corps garner enough FB votes to win $100,000 in the Chase Community Giving campaign in 2011, and it consumed our entire lives for the better part of a week.

So if you see multiple posts from me over the next few days, cut me some slack. Or do me a favor and vote, and then help me out even more by sharing on your own Facebook page, and I won’t have to be in your face so much. It’s simple:

Go to the Contest tab on the Shakeology Facebook page.

Click on “View Leaderboards” and find the thumbnail of me in my kitchen.

Watch the video if you must! More importantly, click on the “Vote” button and then the “Share” button to post it on your timeline. This will take people directly to the little Vote window.

The takeaway from this long, hairy story is this: I did something I never in a million years thought I would ever do. I put myself on public display at my absolute dorkiest, and I did it as part of a campaign to promote a product. I hope this tells you something about Shakeology, and how much I believe in it.

(OK, it was a little fun pretending to be Julie Andrews.)

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