This is the remaster of the official 1998-1999 band video for the Centennial High School Marching Band and Color Guard from Gresham, OR. Originally produced and edited by Ellen Markell on VHS, it has now been digitized and remastered using Davinci Resolve by two band alumni, David Radford (class of 2002, freshman in this video) and Justin Radford (class of 2005).

Features footage of band camp, rehearsal, and performances primarily from the marching band, but also some footage of the pep bands and jazz bands, as well as some behind-the-scenes featurettes such as the making of the flags for the color guard. The band’s trip to Victoria, BC is also a prominent part of this video.

The fall field show, “American Overtures,” features three classic American pieces: “American Overture” by Wilcox Jenkins, “Barley Wagons” and “Happy Endings” by Aaron Copland. Centennial High School placed 2nd throughout the entire fall season, losing out to Grants Pass High School. They did eventually win the Sweepstakes award (1st place overall) during their reprise performance the following spring at the Rose Festival’s Festival of Bands in Portland, OR.

The list of changes and updates in the remaster include:

* Color correction on every shot, primarily to fix white balance. Most outdoor shots were blue/green heavy, and many of the indoor shots inside the high school had obnoxiously warm color temperature. Due to the limitations of the cameras at the time, these corrections occasionally had minor side effects, like a slight yellow hue over the Canada footage.
* Light balancing: The video skewed on the brighter side, so everything overall was darkened, the highs tempered, and the mids adjusted for maximum clarity. Saturation was also increased to bring out the color, mainly skin-tone and the sweet color of Oregon grass in the fall.
* Additional processing included noise reduction and debanding that helped remove jagged lines.
* Audio Remastering: The background hum of the VHS tape was removed from the entire video, and numerous EQ’s were added to cut out the muddiness of the original recording. Low end was bumped to bring back the tubas as they weren’t picked up well by the camcorder mics. Some boosts were added in the upper-mids to bring out clarity in the drumline.
* All the title cards were recreated from scratch in 1080p as accurately to the originals as possible. This fixed the misspelling of Aaron Copland’s name, eliminated the VHS warble in the background, and made the text easier to read.
* Most controversially, some additional edits were done, both to fix errors in the original video, and additional artistic edits that we believe improve the quality. Fades and dissolves were added at the beginning and end of sections. A lot of unnecessary black space was removed, mainly between sections but also between shots (almost certainly mistakes in the original editing process). Credits and title cards were lengthened due to the originals often being too quick to read at times. Also, some footage was cut; mainly to accommodate the increased length of the title cards (as in the opening credits) but also to improve some shots where the “camera was left running” after the main action of the shot ended. If I was to guess, about 10-15 seconds of actual footage was cut.

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