It was an ordinary day. Super Bowl Sunday and the big game had begun. Then, sometime during the game there appeared an advertisement for Mercedes-EQ which began with a view of a bridge at what appeared to be dusk. I looked at Carol and told her that couple-second clip looked awful familiar. Never did I imagine that it was the same bridge that I have taken photographs of for years. The bridge was the Veterans Memorial Bridge that connects the little town of Columbia, Pennsylvania with the even smaller town of Wrightsville which is to the west of Columbia. I had forgotten about the second or two clip on my TV screen until it appeared on the cover of my newspaper a few days later. Headline read..."Local footage appears in Super Bowl ad".....with a sub-head of "Drone shot by Lititz father and son ends up in Mercedes commercial."
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Pretty neat to know that over 100,000,000 viewers probably saw a second or two of something I get to see all the time. The father and son duo were Eric and Nathan Wenger. The father and son duo had shot the aerial footage of the Veterans Memorial Bridge on the morning of December 31, 2018. The two have been shooting, editing, posting and selling drone clips on sites like Shutterstock and Ponds5 while using the name of 717 Drone Guys, referring to Lancaster's Zip Code. It was a few years ago that dad Eric received a drone as a birthday gift from his wife. Since that time he and his son have taken about 11,000 clips, mostly from northern Lancaster County. In the summer of 2018 their aerial footage of local flooding was used by a national media outlet and they have been featured in many other productions that you may have perhaps seen. In 2020 the Philadelphia Eagles used some of their footage in a video that aired and in 2021 Hallmark bought footage of aerial clips of nearby downtown Ephrata, PA. Hallmark also used some of their footage in holiday movies like "You, Me & the Christmas Tree," "Boyfriends of Christmas Past" and "A Royal Queen's Christmas." Eric says he gets notified if any of their clips are used and whom might have purchased them. He is still waiting to see how much their latest clip sold for by the ad company. Just so happened that Eric and his wife were hosting a Super Bowl party with their son, who is a high school sophomore, when someone sent a Facebook message asking if the footage in the ad was his. He didn't feel that the footage was very good since it wasn't very colorful and had a little bit of sunrise peeking through. He said, "Of all the clips I've ever shot, I would have put that one near the bottom." He was amazed at what the company video editor did with the footage they used. They wanted a night theme that featured a bridge and after working with the footage got exactly what they wanted. I can't imagine how neat it must have felt to be able to see something you did appear on a program like the Super Bowl. Seems that the hobby of Eric and Nathan has become more of a passion for the two of them. They have had clips show up on other TV shows as well as in movies. But what is the best part of the hobby is being able to share their passion for video with the world. And...the world was certainly watching a few weeks ago during the Super Bowl. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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