Dream Pilot Media: telling sports stories and more

BY CLIFF SMELLEY

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Want to relive that touchdown you scored, that 3-point shot you sank or that home run you hit?

In today’s world, it’s easier for high-school student-athletes to see their highlight plays, thanks to technology and a platform in social media in which to post them, but it takes someone to step up and make it happen.

Enter Dream Pilot Media, a venture started in 2021 by Latoya Chandler (a 2001 Bradford High School graduate) and Stefan Nichols (a 1995 BHS graduate) that creates videos set to music, giving high-school kids something maybe they wouldn’t experience unless they were fortunate to play collegiately or professionally.

When he was a BHS student, Nichols could read about himself and see photos of himself in the newspaper, but actually watching plays unfold was something he and other student-athletes didn’t enjoy.

“It was just something I never had growing up in Starke,” he said. “Graduating in 1995, there was no social media. You just had a whole bunch of VHS tapes.”

Dream Pilot Media, which also takes still photos and produces graphics work, began as a hobby, really, but it led to paid contracts with school booster groups and other organizations.

“I never went into it thinking, ‘Hey, I’m getting ready to start a media company,’” Nichols said. “It wasn’t until we started getting a whole bunch of taps on the shoulder from high schools and different organizations like the North Florida Suns. It was like, ‘You need an LLC, and we can pay you.’ I was like, ‘Well, I guess we’ve got a business now.’

“I’m not going to say we were forced into being a business. It was kind of a nice, friendly nudge to go ahead and become official.”

The overall goal, though, remains the same — to give back to young student-athletes and others in the community.

“We’ve done more stuff for free than we’ve gotten paid for,” Nichols said. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

From community events to athletics

Dream Pilot Media really got its start on a whim, with Nichols deciding to buy a camera and learning how to use it and getting tremendous help from Chandler.

“She taught me the ins and outs as far as how to operate the camera,” Nichols said.

Then, it was simply improving as he went.

“I’m not going to say everybody should adopt this, but if you keep trying something long enough, eventually you’ll start to pick it up,” Nichols said. “You’ll figure out an easier way to do things or smarter ways to do things the next time.”

Nichols and Chandler first began chronicling community events. Then, the requests started coming in.

“It turned into doing a few videos here and there for a few couples for weddings,” Nichols said. “Then, somebody asked us, ‘Hey, do you do baby showers?’ I was like, ‘Well, I guess so.’

“It was like one job after another. It was something we had never done before, so we just said, ‘You know what? Let’s try it?’”

Eventually, the decision was made to try capturing moments from BHS football games.

“I just wanted to give kids an opportunity for exposure,” Nichols said.

Nichols, Chandler and Brenton Ruise cover various athletic events from all angles. At a football game, for example, Nichols said he’ll typically use a camcorder that can zoom in from long distances, so a lot of times he’ll stand in the back of one of the end zones, while Chandler and Ruise work the sidelines.

“If one person misses a play, the other person has it,” Nichols said. “A lot of times, people ask us about a play: ‘How did you all switch angles?’ ‘Well, we’ve got three different cameras.’ We may splice a play together from three different camera angles to make it look cinematic.”

Nichols also has a DJI pocket gimbal, which is good for getting close-in shots. He’ll use that to get footage of a team huddling on the sideline with a coach or for interviews.

“The coaches are very helpful,” Nichols said. “They know what I’m there for, so that makes it a lot easier.”

Editing and producing a finished highlight video after a football game tends to be a long affair.

“We burn the candle very late on Friday nights and into Saturday morning,” Nichols said, adding that the work can last until 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Saturday.

You won’t find Dream Pilot Media at Bradford athletic events only. The crew has also done work or has been asked to do work for schools in Union County, Baker County, Columbia County, Middleburg and Williston.

Dream Pilot was contracted to do work for the BHS football program last year by the Bradford Touchdown Club, resulting in working all home games and a few away games as well as gathering footage from practices.

Other paid jobs have included working with the North Florida Suns basketball organization as well as the Lake City Vipers youth football organization. Nichols said he especially enjoyed the Lake City Vipers job, which involved covering a big tournament at the University of Florida.

“That was a dream come true for me because since I started filming, I’ve wanted to actually film a Gators game,” Nichols said. “It wasn’t quite a Gators game, but I was there at Ben Hill Griffin (Stadium).

“That’s one thing on my bucket list, to hopefully get on the sideline for the Gators.”

Opportunities, achieving dreams and telling a story

Though Dream Pilot Media moved toward covering athletics, it’s still involved in non-sports work. Nichols said Dream Pilot has done projects for mosquito-repellent company Thermacell, which has a research center in Hampton. Other jobs have included working with real-estate companies and assisting BHS in its attempt to get funding for parking by providing aerial-drone footage.

“It just shows that if you have the means to do media, there are all types of avenues you can go down,” Nichols said. “You don’t even really have to do sports.”

One project, which was kind of sports-related, but really more a labor of love for someone many people in the community know, was producing a video for Roger Crews and his love of paintball.

I think I had more fun than Roger,” Nichols said. “Roger was tired. I don’t think he understood that when you’re actually filming, you have to do several takes. It was hot out there. He had all his gear on. I think he was relieved when it was over with, but I had fun.”

In looking toward the future, Nichols said he’d love to have contracts with various universities, but said that his ultimate goal is to create his own TV channel that would be available for content creators.

“I want to have a platform where people can have their short films or docuseries or whatever else they have going on,” Nichols said.

That would tie in to how Dream Pilot Media got its name. People have dreams, and Dream Pilot Media is the “pilot” that helps people turn their dreams into reality.

And if someone’s dream is to go into some type of media, Dream Pilot’s creators are willing to help. Nichols said he’d like to give shadow opportunities to youth. Perhaps a young person will one day be part of a new Dream Pilot Media-type venture.

“I can’t do this forever,” Nichols said.

Helping youth is something Nichols enjoys, whether it’s giving a student-athlete a cool-looking highlights video with Dream Pilot Media or talking to Bradford High School students about their future in his “real job” as a Santa Fe College Achieve specialist.

“I’m on the high school campus almost every day throughout the week,” Nichols said. “I pretty much just meet with kids, and I talk to them about their career exploration and, really, just life. The truth is, not everybody’s going to go to college. You just talk to them and make sure they’re actually on a path where they’re setting up options for themselves.”

Perhaps some of those students he talks to will go on to find great success in life. Who knows? Maybe Dream Pilot Media will help them tell their story.

That’s what Dream Pilot Media is all about — telling a story.

“I would say that’s the biggest thing we do,” Nichols said. “We don’t just point and film a game and say, ‘These are the highlights.’ We want it to be entertaining, especially in this day and age of social media, where people’s attention spans are kind of short.

“We try to do something that’s going to kind of grab you.”