Over the past two years, our team has had the pleasure to work with the Virginia Western Community College Education Foundation in Roanoke, VA. It’s core mission it to aid students from all walks of life, financial support so they can reach their education goals and set them up for either continuing their education at a 4 year institute or other place of higher education, or set them up for the career force with new credentials. They do this by a wide option of scholarships and grants, maybe of which are funded by private donors, trusts, or other sources in the endowment.
Our function, producing a video for the annual donors banquet is to showcase donors how their gifts and contributions have gone on to impact these young peoples lives for the better. Not by giving them a hard sell to contribute again, but share stories directly from these students themselves.
As a boutique production company, we have a heavy hand on lots of the creative concepts and development for the projects. It can take a lot of creative bandwidth but usually its worth it. Because we’re still a small boutique outfit, we still get to work hand in hand with our clients in highly collaborative ways. The level of collaboration we get to enjoy with visionaries like Carole, likely pulled from her previous career as a print news editor, makes the final product really shine. Many of her colleagues also bring so much to the table given they understand the intended viewer better than we do which we credit much of the success of each project we do with the education foundation. It’s why we’re grateful that our relationship is continuing for another year in 2024.
PROJECT TEAM
Director/Cinematographer: Angel David Verde
Project Manager: Carole Tarrant, Coordinator of Development, VWCC Education Foundation
Editor, Sound Design, Color: Angel David Verde
Grip: Carlton Melton
Production Assistant: Holly Snell
THE WORK - TABLE OF CONTENT
Letters To My Future Self - 2023 Donors Video
I think it’s a worthy goal to always out do yourself when working for clients that have the same over arching need from a video, but don’t want to do the exact same thing each year. This video was one we weren’t sure how we’d top so I guess the verdict is still out. However, with a slightly smaller budget this year we wanted to find a unique way to capture the hopes and dreams of these students without requiring a lot of filming days since those bring up costs quickly.
VIDEO CONCEPT
The basic idea we landed on was, how do we have students tell donors what they were able to accomplish with the help of their donations and thank you for their gifts and contributions to the scholarships that helped them through VWCC without having to say that so directly?
This is where the idea of writing a letter to their selves 10 years from now, as they hope to see their goals reached. The team at the Education Foundation partner with students advisors to really help them grasp the concept.
KEY ELEMENTS
To insert the thank you element, we asked each student to end their letter by saying, thank you for believing in me. This thank you was them literately saying thank you to themselves for working hard. But it was also a way to insert a indirect thank you to the donors.
STAGING
By in large this video was very simple. We didn’t change the camera framing once, we fit the student into the scene by way of a adjustable chair. We wanted their reading of their letters to be the focus of the video so the viewer had to tune in and not be distracted by excessive cuts and b-roll. We setup a little fake desk and then used a large rear-projection and compositing of a few prominent locations on campus as a background. Our team masked out the sky in the photos used and put in a loop of clouds to add some sublet motion into the scene without being too busy. It worked, plan and simple.
SOUND DESIGN
Music aids in cuing the viewers emotions. It’s overlooked so often. We settled on using a single song given the video itself was fairly short. Often we’ll try to use 2-3 tracks to carry a video but this one fit nicely in the background but it’s movements worked well when it needed to come forward to define each act of the video.
Follow Your Heart - 2022 Donors Video
The first donors video we produced for the Education Foundation really tapped into our core skills of branded documentary projects. We were able to interview a several students during a series of standup filming sessions on day 1 and 2. Then the foundation choose several students that we’d expand their story and really show a glimpse of their life and personality in verité vignettes. This was fun given our project manger and director, Angel David Verde has years of experience filming unscripted TV and documentary films.
KEY ELEMENTS
We made the video by asking students a series of questions. This formed the storyline and transitioned from their interview clips to each short scene. We asked about their scholarships, where they're from, who encouraged them to go to school, their future goals, and how they'll feel when they graduate.
One important factor was to include a feeling of enjoyment, optimism, and positivity. Since these are very personal stories and many of the students are going through challenging life changes, the tone can become quite serious. To lighten the mood, we decided to finish on a positive note by showcasing their hopes for the future, ending with some dancing to bring joy and laughter to the project.
It's important for people to see how their gifts and donations make a direct impact on others' lives. We're just the messengers; the students are the real stars of their own stories. These young people have a bright future ahead.
