This post is a continuation of a series of blogs highlighting our year’s events and storylines. A lot has happened this year in our shop, and we want to share those stories with you.
The coolest part about being in this business is that you will never know what each job brings until you get on set. It is also unpredictable to when you receive those jobs. For this post, we want to share a few of our favorite and most interesting jobs we were on this year. While there were many things we filmed over the past 365 days, we thought that these projects really took the cake.
An Inspirational Duet
Back in March, we received a call from Josh from New Day Photography about documenting a Christian singer recording a song with his former reality show partner. This brought us to New York City where we met John Glosson and Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles. Jennifer was John’s partner on the 2012 reality competition show, Duets, where they finished in second place. It was awesome to see these two collaborate and work out kinks to make their recording of “Compass” the best that it can be. You can listen to this and the rest of John’s songs on either Spotify or Apple Music, or you can buy his EP, “Spirit Move,” online.
On set as our producer, Ellis, interviews former NBA great and current NBA TV/TNT analyst Chris Webber.
A “Finals” Encounter
Our hometown Cleveland Cavaliers had a great four-year run making it to the NBA Finals, winning in 2016, but in the last installment, we had a chance to take part in the festivities. Working with NBA Digital and producer Ellis, we gained access to the Quicken Loans Arena floor for practice in-between games 3 and 4, where we interviewed current players, journalists, and even Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr. We also filmed former NBA players such as Grant Hill and Chris Webber for a Players Only Films piece about the influence of players from the former Yugoslavia, as well as rookie sensation Luka Dončić. Our interviews with Hill and Webber made the final piece of the film now available on Facebook Watch.
Hitting the Jackpot
We created a commercial for the Ohio Lottery promoting their Skee-Ball instant game. It was a lot of fun making the lone Skee-Ball machine the spotlight for our lucky, or perhaps unlucky, competitor. This did take a lot of man-power to strategically place the lights and work the equipment, such that we had to come in the day before to set everything up. Nonetheless, everyone did their part in making this one of the most-viewed videos on the Ohio Lottery YouTube page.
One Fall Weekend in Connecticut
In Northeast Ohio, we have an excellent relationship with Lawrence School, a private school that caters to students with learning differences. When we found out that a school similar to Lawrence in Connecticut wanted to work with us, we were excited. The only difference was that it was a boarding school in New England but caters to the same type of students. We spent one Fall weekend in Litchfield at Forman School, filming interviews with the students, faculty, and parents, as well as filmed student life from class to free time. What we found out in both schools is that these kids want to be challenged academically despite their differences, and they are talented whether on the field or on stage. What also made this project our favorites was our relationship with our school liaison, John. Not only was he great to get along with, but also he helped plan our filming schedule and even collaborated with us in making some updates to our site and Facebook page. We cannot wait to see what our next project will be with the school.
Viking Pride
Since 2014, we have worked with Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School’s boys basketball team in creating a player introduction video that is shown before home games, similar to ones shown at college and NBA games but without the fancy lights and pyrotechnics. Our relationship started when the team helped us with a scene for marketing material with Findaway. For their time, we gave them an intro video that they can get excited for. Four years later, we have made four intro videos, three short documentaries chronicling their trips to Columbus for the OHSAA State Championships, and helped them with the production of their Hall of Champions event in 2015, involving school greats like Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard, former NBA player and CBS Sports March Madness analyst Clark Kellogg, and former NFL player and ESPN Radio personality Mike Golic. We felt like each year we have done these videos that we have gradually improved and increasingly had more fun doing them than the last. It is always challenging to come up with new ideas and songs with no budget, but it is a great time to experiment and test out new equipment and techniques to use for future projects. We cannot thank head coach Babe Kwasniak, the team, and the school for having us give these awesome kids, whether players or students, videos they can be proud of.
While we worked on even more projects this past year, this is just a sample of what our team is capable of and our experience with different types of work. We are excited with what will come in 2019, and we hope you all keep follow us on this journey. We have one more blog post tomorrow. Stay tuned!