Four Months Late, Senior DVDs Celebrate ’04

Four months after their intended arrival, the long-awaited Senior DVDs have been mailed out to the Class of 2004, who can now belatedly revel in the glories of their senior year at Harvard.

Produced by three members of the Class of 2003, the DVD was initially scheduled for a September release, but the date was then pushed back to November and finally to January.

The creators—James C. Harrington ’03, Michael D. Cornish ’03, and Luke R. Long ’03—cited a commitment to the highest possible quality as explanation for the DVD’s delayed release.

The three men, who had created a DVD for their own graduating class in 2003, began work on this new project last year, compiling footage and working with an on-campus manager.

The two-hour-long DVD includes slideshows and interviews commemorating the senior year, with all its various successes and foibles, of last year’s alums.

But audio glitches and complaints about content have reminded producers that they are, according to co-producer Harrington, “very much in the learning process.”

Many alumni who purchased the DVD were happy to receive the final product in spite of the delay.

“I liked it,” said Carolyn E. Davies ’04. “[It was] a little slow, but worth the wait.”

“It was really nice to get it,” said Sarah L. Samuels ’04. “It definitely made me kind of sentimental.”

But not all graduates were satisfied with the product. Audio glitches on a number of the DVDs caused producers to investigate possible concerns with the company replicating the disks, Long said.

“It sounds like chipmunks are singing rock or pop music,” Bonnie Poon ’04 wrote in an e-mail.

Harrington and Long said they welcome feedback and are attempting to address all consumer concerns.

“There were audio issues with some DVDs and we’re definitely, no question, going to replace them,” Long said.

“We’ve also always had a 100 percent money back guarantee,” he said. “If anyone doesn’t like their DVD, they can send it back for a full refund, no questions asked.”

While the producers sent out an e-mail asking for candid responses last week, Poon’s attempts to contact the three through their website were unsuccessful.

“I sent feedback to them via www.theseniordvd.com several times within the past three weeks, but have not gotten a response,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Others were disappointed by the content of the DVD. Several viewers mentioned that interview clips did not feature enough students.

“It was strange that they went back to the same interviews,” Caitlin T. Ferriter ’04 said. “I thought they had more to work with [and] it didn’t instill any sense of nostalgia...it left me feeling kind of bland.”

But the majority of graduates interviewed approved of the footage, citing moments highlighting either their friends or themselves.

“I think it sums up our experience at Harvard well,” Davies said. “It was a nice cross-section of people at school.”

Samuels and her friends did not sign up for interviews, but were delighted to have been filmed wearing customized T-shirts as they moved out last summer.

“The did a good job of getting their cameras around,” she said. “They should definitely keep doing [the DVD].”

The three producers hope to create a DVD for the Class of 2005, continuing a two-year tradition. They also plan to expand on-campus coverage to a team of two or three on-campus managers.

“We’ve definitely put in a lot hours [making the DVD]. We’re not doing it to get rich; we all have a lot of other things going on,” Long said. “But as long as we can continue [the project], it’s something we’re passionate about.”

—Staff writer Allison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.