Peer Award for "Confessions..."

A favorite voice-over project of mine - because of its subject matter and its very "personal" story - received a very special honor last night at the TIVA-DC Peer Awards Evening at the National Press Club.

"Confessions of an Airplane Lover" was honored with a TIVA Silver Peer Award in the Voiceover - Long Form, Male category.

For readers outside the industry, every year, TIVA-DC (The Television, Internet, and Video Association of DC) presents its Peer Awards, honoring "Tbe Best and Brightest of Washington DC." These prestigious awards recognize "the professionals of the Metropolitan Washington media community who have demonstrated excellence in their work, as judged by their peers."

In keeping with this year's Peer Awards theme, "A Decade of Excellence," a new "Classic" category was created to recognize work produced prior to the current year's window of eligibility.

Happily, "Confessions" fell into that Classic category, prompting me to enter it, and I was delighted when it received this "peer" recognition.

"Confessions of an Airplane Lover" is a 38-minute audio production on CD. Here's what it is and how it came to be.

At the time of the centenary of powered flight in 2003, marking the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, I realized my life-long love affair with airplanes had, by then, gone on for some fifty years. It began with childhood visits with my Dad to the observation promenade of Baltimore’s Friendship Airport (now B-W-I) in the 1950s and would never get “old.”

From time to time, I’d write narratives relating to favorite airliners or aviation experiences to go with my exhibits of aviation photography. In 2003, I decided the time might be right to expand those cherished memories into a unified story. “Confessions of an Airplane Lover” was published in the May/June 2004 issue of Airliners.

But, being a voice-over guy with my own studio, I thought it might also be fun to voice and produce “Confessions,” with music and (of course!) airliner sounds. And what fun it was!

The twelve chapters on the CD are an unabashedly sentimental and romantic account of cherished experiences involving airplanes and flight, mainly from a saner – and classier – era of commercial aviation, although one chapter does deal with the welcome sight of airliners returning to the skies over the Potomac, when Reagan National Airport was finally reopened after the horrors of 9/11. And a final chapter, relating to a photo I took of a little boy gazing out of a Dulles departure lounge window at a huge Triple-Seven, brings it all back to the child’s wonderment at watching airliners with his Dad at “that sleepy little airport called Friendship.”

The story is dedicated to my Dad, who got the love affair started with those trips to the airport, and to all the aviation professionals whose dedication, expertise, and courtesies to me on board their aircraft made possible the experiences it relates.

Thank you, TIVA, for recognizing a project so very near to my heart. I may not "land" for quite some time.

©2010 Steve Ember

To hear a short clip...