Five-Year Collaboration

thelatebloomer | April 23, 2017 | Reply

Five-Year Collaboration – My sound editor, Christina Horgan, with whom I’ve worked five years on Late Bloomer Show, posted this yesterday, our fifth anniversary, on Facebook. This shows how rewarding collaboration can be.

“Who knew?!”
Five years ago today, Kaye Kittrell had an idea to create a web series around her experiences of transforming her urban front yard from lawn and landscape into an organic food garden – when she knew next to nothing about gardening – and aptly called her show “Late Bloomer.” She hoped to inspire and encourage other urbanites to grow their own food, too.

Kaye, all by herself, documented her progress doing the work, gardening and learning about cinematography and video frame rates, and the challenges of lavalieres and mic’s and other blunders of production sound and how critical production sound would affect the quality of each episode, wrote her scripts, hosted, and produced each show… she would undertake ALL of this on her own, a one-person production crew, all the while growing and maintaining her garden and growing her audience! The goal was to make 20 episodes. The whole idea was a gamble.

Her one-woman crew lasted for 5 full seasons, 100 episodes! “Who knew?!” She would need help to assemble her videos into a specific theme and story, and with a very limited budget Kaye hired a small post-production crew to video edit, sound edit, create the motion graphics and compose the show’s jingles and music.

Kaye on location in Tennessee in Season 3

The journey has been one of joy, growing pains, minor setbacks, wonderful bounty and rewards, fun, and always a sense of accomplishment. Above all else, for me, the friendships sewn and grown which I’ve shared over all five seasons between “Late Bloomer’s” small crew with Kaye, Megan Adeff – editor Season 1-4, Mika Tanisaki – motion graphics S1-5, Jon Pileggi – composer S2-5, and Trevor Horton – editor S5, have been the real reward.

Five seasons and 100 episodes… 8 Nominations and 4 Wins at Web Festivals in the U.S., Canada, and Europe – Best Reality Series, 3 times Nominated and 1 Win at Vancouver Web Fest, Nominated and Won for Best Edutainment Series at Miami Web Fest, and Nominated for two awards at Die Seriale (May 2017) in Germany, and Won two awards at Roma Web Fest. “Who knew?!”

Thank you for taking me along for the ride and wishing you all the best Kaye, in all your future endeavors. – Chriss Horgan

My response:

This is an amazing tribute, and I’m honored to have worked with Chriss and such amazingly talented, generous, and creative professionals in our Five-Year Collaboration.

Four women met in a coffee shop in January, 2012 and agreed to work together on this new thing called a web series about me learning to garden. It’s been the professional collaboration of my life which forged deep friendships as well. Before anyone could edit sound and picture, motion graphics artist Mika Tanisaki designed my titles, logos and branding, which I still use today. Thanks for allowing me the time to grow, as a producer and content creator. Chriss Horgan, Megan Adeff, Jon Pileggi, Mika Tanisaki and most recently, the very talented Trevor Horton. I’d also like to thank Charlotte McMillan for collaborating with me in 2012 to come up with the show’s jingle. I wanted a whistle in there to harken back to The Andy Griffith show, which I thought had a very homey feel. Thank you all for being on my team! It’s meant the world to create with all of you, making me look and sound good, and have a professional presence online. (Note to content creators, good sound is as important as good picture!)

Don’t forget to watch Kaye’s 100th collaboration, California Desert Super Bloom!

P.S. In the first episode, I said, “plants need sun, who knew?” And I thought about having a “Who Knew?” app designed for “Late Bloomer,” but that never happened.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO MAKE A VIDEO ON HOW WE MAKE LATE BLOOMER, LET ME KNOW!

HOW YOU CAN HELP make a Season 6 possible:

1) Make a direct PayPal donation! Keep Late Bloomer blooming!

2) Become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/latebloomershow

3) Order a Growing Heirloom Tomatoes DVD from any page on this website.

4) Order the Late Bloomer Bracelet Collection and I will receive a $5 donation.

5) Order Botanical Interests seeds through my affiliate link! I receive a small commission for promoting products I’ve used and believe in. Click the button to go to their website.