One day we’d all sat down for supper, when Tori looked at me and said, “Dad? I need your help.” I said “Okay, with what?” She continued, “Well, Family Force Five is having a contest… and I want to enter.” Ben piped up in the most taunting voice he could muster, “She wants to meet Soul Glow Activator! She’s in love!” Tori quickly snapped back, “No I’m not!”
I interrupted, “Okay, settle down! Tori, what’s this all about? What do you need to do, and how do you need me to help?”
Tori stated to explain, “Well… I need to make a video showing that I’m their biggest fan.” She started to get excited, as she continued, “When they come to our area on their Christmas tour, they will choose two videos from those who live in the area of the concert.” The faster she talked, the louder she got as the pitch of her voice went higher and higher. “You and a friend get to go to the concert for free and go backstage to meet everyone in the band!” She was raising out of her seat. With wide eyes, she proclaimed “Then you get to go on stage to help with a song! I HAVE TO WIN!”
She had everyone at the table laughing about how excited she got.
I said, “Okay, settle down now. What did you have in mind? She unfolded her plan to show that she was a huge FF5 fan. She said, “I was planning to interview people them while they say that I’m their biggest fan!”
I said “Like who?”
“The kids at youth group. I was also thinking that I could have footage of me inviting people on the street to the concert. I was thinking that you could help me make flyers and get some video shots of me posting them in stores. What do you think, will it work, will you help?”
Ben said, “You’re crazy!”
I said, “Let’s think about this, you need to have some sort of flow for your video. After supper, we sat and came up with an idea of all the video shots we would need. In addition to the interviews and the flyers, we thought she could have a FF5 contest of some sort. So, we decided to have a praise guitar contest. This was a Christian music version of guitar hero. I also suggested that we do a music video with one of their songs.
Tori loved all the ideas. We had about a month to get everything done, edited, and submitted. So, we had a lot to do and only a little time to get it done. Tori worked on getting flyers distributed for her contest and lined up interviews with some of her friends. She asked if I would help plan out the music video.
For the storyline, we thought we could have our family receive an anonymous gift on the porch of a FF5 party in a box. We would have instruments, shutter shades, and iconic green FF5 Christmas pageant bowties. Everyone would be dressed conveniently in a red shirt, and we would have a concert on the front lawn of our house after receiving the box.
The funny part was that our family was working as the custodian crew at the church, so we were working very long hours, and we wouldn’t get finished until around 8pm or later. This meant we could only shoot this music video at night. I thought I would borrow a few bright spinning lights from my ministry and a snow machine as well. We decorated the front of the house with lights and presents. I had an inflatable nativity set; we put printouts of the bands faces on some the nativity people to be funny. We also spelled out FF5 on the roof of our ranch style house so it could be seen. I used my halogen shop lights to light the yard while filming, and they did a pretty good job lighting up the whole front of the house. We also played the song so with us lip synching. The craziest part was that we did all this around 9pm.
Everyone was involved Tori, the boys, and even Chrissy! We had so much fun creating this video. We had the lights flashing and rotating lights that sent beams of light all over the place in the yard with loud music playing. We didn’t have real snow yet, but the snow machine gave a great effect of snow falling. Silas tried to make snow angels, but was not too successful with the fake snow. It was a wonder that the neighbors didn’t call the police, but they knew we were always doing something crazy at our house. It was almost normal for the people driving by to see us out in the yard with blow-up guitars dancing around acting like we were putting on a concert.
There was one last fun part we wanted to put in. The boys thought it would be funny if we included a shot of Tori somehow falling off the roof while putting up lights.
Tori and Jonah went up on the roof acting like they were decorating the house for a concert. We planned that I would interrupt them with a decoration that I got for the video. Tori would move to the edge of the roof, pretending that she was getting upset because the decoration wasn’t big enough for her to win the contest. As she flailed around on the edge of the roof, she would fall from the roof, then we would rush to her side. She would then would look up in pain and whimper that Family Force 5 was worth it.
I had made a stuffed dummy for fun things like pranks and stunts for some of our dumb videos. His name is “Ted,” actually “Dead Ted,” because well… he was always meeting an unfortunate demise in our pranks
For the falling off the roof scene, we dressed Ted in clothes to match Tori’s clothes. Then we would throw Ted off the roof. When we shot the ground scene of Tori talking, we would switch Ted with Tori. With careful editing, it actually worked great
We posted our video to YouTube and waited for a response from the band.
Side note: The video is still up on YouTube. Here is the address to watch it: Tori’s FF5 Christmas Video
A few very nervous, but hopeful weeks went by, and then we received an email stating that Tori was one of the winners!
When I showed her the email, she nearly blew a gasket!
Not only did Tori enter, but so did Ben’s girlfriend at the time, and she was the second winner.
The hard part for Tori was to choose who to take to the concert as her guest. She was allowed to bring one person. Naturally, I helped a great deal with the video, but I wasn’t not able to go because of my work schedule. So, Tori had a hard choice to make, but she did make a great choice. She picked her mom.
The night of the concert came. Tori and Chrissy went, so did Ben and his girlfriend. As the story goes, they got to meet the band backstage and helped onstage with multiple numbers. One song was “The Baby,” and Chrissy loves to tell everyone that she was almost killed on stage by a band member, named Na-daddy, who was spinning around like a tornado, while playing his guitar. He nearly smashed into Chrissy as she was concentrating on holding up a baby doll for the song at the right times.
The sad part was that Tori didn’t get to talk to the guys much, because one of the members of the band, Fatty, had been admitted to the hospital right before the show for kidney failure. , the band was in a hurry to get to the hospital after the show.
Still, this Christmas was another one that went down in the Hunter Clan’s history book as a interesting Christmas–definitely one that will always be remembered as a Fun Family Christmas.
One thing we always tried to hold to and teach the kids was that we work hard AND we play hard. When one of the family tries for something, we all encourage and support to the best of our abilities. Success for one of us is success for all of us.
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