Ron Paul at Texas A&M

This past Tuesday, we were asked to help film Ron Paul’s speech to Texas A&M University. The Daily Paul (dailypaul.com) asked Matt Johnson (filmstrong.com) to get a team together to live-stream the event and produce a video the by the next day.

I happen to be a huge Ron Paul fan. I was born in raised in Lake Jackson, Texas, where he currently resides. And speaking of being born, Dr. Paul happened to be the OBGYN that brought me in to this world. I remember him riding his bike by my house several times a week, and my brothers and I would pause our war games to wave.

In what seems like a few days later, 3,500+ fans took my place in waving and shouting, while I manned my camera and filmed them. It was a weird feeling to have to keep the Glidecam still while everyone else in the room was going berserk over something by which I myself am excited.

I learned a lot about improvisation on this shoot. First, we didn’t have press passes, so we had to do some sneaking around. We were told that cameramen had to stay on the back two rows of the auditorium, and my wide angle lens wasn’t going to cut it from there. So while everyone was being seated, I told the event manager that I need to take “interview footage” of people up front. I made friends with the leader of Youth for Ron Paul, (youthforronpaul.tamu.edu) who got me a seat on the second row. And the interview footage ended up being great!

Afterwards, I wanted to say hello to Dr. Paul and get some up close footage of him. I missed the press time to do interviews with students, so I had to sneak backstage. Another member of Youth for Ron Paul thought I was their photographer, and asked me to take the group’s picture with Dr. Paul. Afterwards I got to talk to him and remind him that he knew me from back home. He seemed like he didn’t really remember me, so I approached our future first lady. She remembered my red hair and freckles, and called out,

“Ron, get over here! This is Taylor Stanley from First Baptist!”

She turned back to me, “He used to point to you and your brothers every Sunday and say ‘I delivered all three of those red heads.’”

After a few more pictures and handshakes, the candidate was urged out a back door nearby where I stood. He stopped to pat me on the back of the arm, “It was nice to see you again, Taylor!”

There seems to be a little bit of something in all of us that desires to be known by someone greater than ourselves. And there’s something in me that desires to capture things that are bigger than myself. Both of those urges were quenched that night, but they already seem to be creeping back in, only a week later.  Perhaps there’s something more than big events and celebrity encounters…