Soft blue lights whispered romance. The bartender polished crystal, the waitress delivered drinks. The jazz quartet laid down smooth riffs on stage while the cameramen were frozen in time.

It sounds like a club in New York or maybe even Chicago, doesn’t it?

No, this was the scene inside Studio A, at Fresno State back in the early ‘90s. Don Priest and his digital media class had the studio into a full-fledged nightclub””except for the booze, of course.

Who could have possibly known, that a 1950s style, 8 mm home-movie camera was to blame.­ But that’s life, according to Don Priest, a.k.a. the Hound Dog.

“It’s really true. My father bought this home-movie camera, and it all snowballed from there,” Priest said. “He took it everywhere. He documented everything and annoyed the hell out of everyone. In high school it was the band, marching through in the day, and rockin’ blues at night.”

Priest is a recently retired Fresno State media professor. That is putting it mildly, considering the accomplishments he has achieved.

He spoke at length about his career and early life Wednesday, Oct. 17 at the University Student Union.

“Yeah, so the kid grew up with music and movies in his bones,” Priest said, as he reflected back on a distinguished career as an educator, while achieving full professor status at Fresno State.

“That fact alone would just crack my family up,” Priest said. “They thought that was so funny, because it took me five years just to get out of high school.”

If it wasn’t the band, the music program, or singing in the choir, it would have taken Priest even longer to graduate.

“I hated high school!” he said.

Upon graduating in 1964, Priest went to a community college for a semester. But after a disagreement with his father, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.

“I really showed him,” Priest said. “Of course when I got to Vietnam I wondered who showed who.”

He spent three years working as a clerk at Treasure Island, then as an escort for fallen Marines, bringing their remains back to their families

Priest was discharged from the Marines in 1968.

After bouncing around odd at jobs for five or six years, Priest had become dependent on alcohol and drugs while attempting to re-adjust to civilian life.

After a serious motorcycle accident, Priest went home and enrolled at Skyline Community College in San Bruno at the age of 35, and applied for a few writing classes.

“You take a couple photos, and you write a few stories,” Priest said. “I wrote about anything and everything, from Queen Elizabeth visiting Yosemite to Joan Baez and Ronald Reagan.”

Upon graduation, Priest narrowed his search for an undergraduate school with the programs he had in mind.­ San Francisco State had a program that was impacted, and Chico State, wasn’t a good fit.

His conversation with Greg Lewis, who ran the photojournalism program at Fresno State, became the deciding factor.­ Priest chose Fresno State for his pursuit for a bachelor’s degree, and after arriving on campus he began looking for a job.

Priest had made a personal connection with professor Candace Egan, at that time a fellow student.­ They both ended up working at KMPH Channel 26.

Priest thought he had found his dream job. He was able to shoot many different things in various lighting conditions.

“Then I got to go back and edit all my own stuff,” Priest said.­ “You don’t get to be a good shooter unless you edit your own stuff.”

Once again, fate would step in.

While covering the U.S. Olympic bicycle trials in Wonder Valley, he was angling for the perfect shot, almost hanging onto the roadway, when a bicyclist struck him.

He ended up in a hospital bed, suffering from a concussion and a broken neck.­ Priest figured it was time to get back to graduate school.

“I wanted to go to UT Austin, because that’s where Austin City Limits was filmed,” Priest said.­ “I had earlier applied to Washington State, and they came through with a full ride.”

Priest ended up in Philadelphia, Miss. to do his thesis on a documentary on the Choctaw Indian reservation, while teaching video production.

When the funding ran out on that project. Priest was ready to come back home.

He called all of his friends in Fresno including Egan.

“So, he calls me on a Friday morning,” Egan said. “And I had recalled a job opening in the video production department,” Egan said.­ “Only problem was, the application was due by 5 p.m. that day, and this was pre-Internet. You had to walk in the application.”

Egan called it the “fickle finger of fate” as Priest was hired by Fresno State as a video production engineer, filming anything that was related to the campus.

Priest had originally intended to write his graduate thesis on the Choctaw project, but one thing led to another, and the Video Café series was born, Priest’s new thesis theme.

“We brought in local blues musicians, and the thing ended up going national on PBS,” Priest said. “Video Café was a nine part series of 30 minute music venues shot in the ‘night club’ here at Fresno State.

“I locked myself in the basement of my apartment for two months and hammered out that paper.”

If Priest could offer any advice to the students here on campus, it would be able to grasp any opportunity that comes along.

“Find out what you love to do, and immerse yourself in it,” Priest said. “If you get the gig, don’t screw it up. And when the door opens, be ready to take the plunge.”

Priest is about to turn the page on a new chapter of his life.

A radio theater production firm in New York is looking for an executive assistant. If all goes as planned, Priest will move to New York in the spring of 2013.

“It’s goodbye, but not farewell,” Priest said. “If fate has taught me anything, I’ll be back.”