Recently I went out to Chicago (from Cleveland) to video the spring car show for JC Whitney Automotive (www.jcw.com).  I shoot video and write articles for Stylin' Trucks (www.stylintrucks.com), a sister company to JC Whitney.

Anyways, the show was lovely.  Here is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my superiors about the show.  I thought, "why keep it internal?  The world should know that this was a good show."

So, here's my take on the show:

They really have their stuff together out there.  Everything was organized beautifully, with sections of the parking lot being designated for certain types of vehicles and employees riding around on these neat little carts, directing traffic, and keeping things neat and orderly.

The parking lot is huge and was nearly overflowing with old-school muscle cars, modern street machines, and beautifully-detailed classic cruisers.  A real site to see.  There were some good trucks and motorcycles there as well.

The facilities and hospitality of the event were second to none.  The actual JCW building was open, so the public had access to well-kept, large restrooms and the employee’s own lunch room (complete with Model-T [or A, I don’t know the difference] and video arcade games.)  The staff was helpful and always present, directing show goers to parking spots, the showroom and clearance sale, the registration tent and anything else that the attendees required.

The organization of the event was superb, and I think that my hat goes off to Toby, the Showroom Manager for that.  The registration area was very well organized, with multiple computers and employees getting people registered very quickly.  The trophies (and there must have been over 100 of them!) were all lined up neatly underneath the registration tent, and when award time came, were handed out by nice ladies that worked together and took turns presenting them.

The DJ/Sound guy was great, with nice tunes all day and delightful MC work.  He was pointing out cars as they drove by the registration tent (on the way to their parking spot) and talking about special areas of interest regarding the cars.  (“Look here folks, this is a gen-u-wine 1956 Hemi ‘cuda.  And I think I hear the whine of a supercharger…look out for this one, people, it’s a screamer!)

The staff was great, especially the three people I mostly interacted with, Toby (retail manager), Tom (maintenance manager), and Ryan (IT), who gave me a tour of the warehouse and drove me around the parking lot in a little cart for some moving shots.  He also got myself, the Stylin' Trucks/JCW photographer, Amy, and Amy’s boyfriend, Todd, up on the roof for some nice pictures and video.

As you can see, I loved it.  Lots of muscle cars, hot bikes.  It was a really good time!

For some related stuff: I just finished the video for the 2008 JC Whitney Spring Show, and here are one, two, and three blog posts talking about my editing and color correcting problems, solutions, and overall awesomeness.  Again, here is the video.