Just less than two weeks before the in house deadline for the group, the producers sit out in the grass as the sun goes down to discuss where everyone is at. The projects have been chosen and most of the footage has been shot but the editing process has hardly begun. Finding time in each person’s schedule is difficult as time runs down on this quarter’s school schedule.

“We’re coming really close to the deadline; I really don’t want to add anything to anyone’s plate,” Zach reminds all the producers of the pending internal deadline. Just before this meeting we had a Dawn 2 Dusk meeting where Terry Eiler showed soulofathens.com, where the countdown clock for the whole project was at 18 days.

Ryan the lead animator is sitting next to me and sketching out ideas for the Second Life piece, which is nothing but drawing for right now. Tomorrow a group of us will be sitting in front of the virtual world and ‘filming’ on the ‘Ohio University island.’

The rough video cuts that I have seen so far have been superb, but still rough and the group is quick to critique the work of each of its members. Tonight’s meeting went deep into the night and the group was still looking at videos at 10:30 p.m.

Slowly you can feel the momentum building. Seeing the rough cuts really motivates the gang to go back to the editing room and get moving. After all there is less than two weeks before the project is due.

The Soul of Athens has given a subtle nod to the notorious wave of reality shows and “makings of,” by bringing you a provocative behind the scenes video blog all our own. Ready or not, the team is gearing up to search their souls and reveal the stories behind each successful venture, obstacle and disfigured nose.

For the production of the video blog, I teamed up with three multimedia students: the logical Lonnie, the bearded Manny and Josh, whom recently decided to sport a rat tail. The trio come from the somewhat eccentric lifestyles of cartoon-inspired tattoos and intergalactic skate-park traveling. I knew I was in for a fun adventure.

They set up their cameras in the humid, padded sound booth of the Scripps Multimedia Lab, as I got my journalist’s notepad ready. The room was the antithesis of Pandora’s Box — a confession room where thoughts pertaining to the project would pour into the room (and the camera), rather than out.

We started by bringing in the “Code Team” — the group of clean-cut techies working with ActionScript to make the content a reality. Stay tuned for the first installment of the Soul of Athens video blog and find out what these guys truly believe is the soul of Athens.

Eric Mayville, a senior in the School of Visual Communication and member of the Code Team, gets ready to spill his soul in the sound booth.