SPOKES -- August 25, 2020

President Thompson called the meeting to order at 7:00 AM this morning as we watched a men’s
chorus from WMU sing our national anthem at a previous WMU Night at Comerica Park. They looked
great and we are sure they sounded excellent also. Art Ayers offered our invocation, including better
hearing for all in attendance when listening to our national anthem in his prayers, I’m sure.

Our guests include potential member Angelica Gallegos and our speaker, Rob Byrd.

 

 You will need a password to join our meetings from now on so pay attention to the
invitation to join the meeting you get via email to find the password.

 The District 6360 Raffle will begin this week. “tickets” are $25 each. We have a record
of 100% participation in the raffle and we have a history of an outstanding rate of return
on our investment, having secures thousands of dollars in grants from the district
foundation. You can secure your ticket(s) by sending in your donation to Bob Straits at
our post office box (#24).

 Our September programs should be all set and work continues on October
presentations. If you need help finding a program, contact Bill Roberts or Dan.

 We received a thank you note from the food pantry for our donation of pancake mix left
over from our successful fundraiser.

 We also received a thank you from Marty Graber for our donation to the rainwater
retention system for the hospital in Kenya. This donation continues decades of support
for the school and hospital in Ngoswani, projects headed by Marty.

 

 Bob Copping enlightened us about how to serve eggs benedict.

 

50/50 and Fines
Jean Stein was the big winner this morning while Ted Weber came back to his winning ways, taking the
virtual $2 prize.

 

Fines were charged to:
 This was anniversary week for our club:

 Bob and Gail Brickman are celebrating their sixty-first anniversary
 Art and Cindy Bolt celebrate their fifty-eighth
 Tom and Karen Ruesink are doing number fifty-seven
 Nick and Nancy Tuit celebrate fifty-four
 And youngsters Mark and LaRae Odland celebrate forty-nine.
 Congratulations to all of the happy couples!

 Also:
 Scott Mark announced the birthday of daughter Jennifer
 Dene Hadden said that his grandson Cole expected to spend his 19 th birthday moving into his
dorm room at MSU on Friday.
 We serenaded the celebrants by singing a Ludington version of the birthday song. Fortunately,
Dan kept us all on mute during the song.

 

Rosalie Plechaty introduced our speaker this morning, Rob Byrd from Moondog Productions

Rob began with a little background. He was a 1989 graduate of South Haven High School and went on
to Ferris State University, mostly to play a little football and lots of baseball but also studied video
production. He told us he was influenced to make video production a career by one of his college
professors who praised his work.

He began his career with a video production company in Grandville and later moved to WGVU as a
producer. His work there led to an Emmy and Emmy nominations. His production of Hope College’s
Christmas Vespers concert was the Emmy winning piece.

He talked about producing and directing live TV, including many years of doing the Hope College/Calvin
College basketball games and the WGVU telethons. He enjoyed his years in these positions both from
the nature of the work and the many interesting people he got to meet, including former President
Gerald Ford and many others. Finally, the hours required to do the work they wanted and to do it well
began to take a toll so Rob decided to start his own company.

In 2007 he started Moondog Productions as an independent video production company. Much of the
first few years of work was focused on working in the west, especially the ski areas of Colorado,
Montana and Utah.

He returned to South Haven as his main area of work and did, and still does video for groups,
companies, civic organizations and others. He began his radio show, The Moondog Show, about a year
and a half ago and recently expanded it by half an hour, with the last half hour focused on local non-
profits and their goals. He mentioned that our own Rosalie Plechaty is a big part of getting that part of
the show ready for the air.

He talked about the process of creating a video – it’s much more than just pointing the camera and
shooting. There is the important pre-production work of determining just what the client wants, what
will work and making sure everything is ready for the shoot, which may take many hours itself. After
the shoot, the post production phase takes place which includes editing, review and presenting to the

client. Projects take many hours to complete and his favorite kind of video to make, documentaries,
take months or more.

With the COVID pandemic, he has expanded his client base, even doing wedding videos to provide live
feeds to guests who cannot be at the actual ceremony. He is willing to do work for any group or
company that wants to talk to him and he tries to keep his rates as low as possible.
In response to questions, he indicated that the difference between a producer and a director is that a
producer, with a team of people that often includes the director, makes sure everything from catering
to personnel are squared away ahead of time and that the basic concept of the shoot and what is
expected are clear. The director then takes over and makes sure that the actual shoot, including
camera angles, staging and all of that stuff are done in a way that will reach the result the producer
and his team have outlined.

You can see Rob’s work by visiting his website: https://robbyrdfilms.com/

President Thompson thanked Rob and presented him with our speaker’s gift, a certificate to a local
eatery, this week, Maria’s.

 

We closed the meeting with the Four Way Test

NEXT WEEK: Rosalie Plechaty will introduce Braver Angels.