When a Pitch Comes to Life
As a video production company, we make a lot of different videos for a wide variety of clients. A good portion of the videos we make highlight the amazing work of our nonprofit clients and the people impacted by that work, and it’s common for the idea of the video to come from our clients. This makes sense, because they know their work, their mission, and their people. As we get to know our clients over the years, we start to get a deep understanding of their work and branding, and we start to come up with our own ideas for videos. We absolutely love getting to this stage of our client relationships and we are definitely there with One Million Degrees!
The Forever Ready Productions Chicago office has worked with One Million Degrees since 2022. One Million Degrees accelerates community college students’ progress on career pathways to economic mobility. With program coordinators, mentors, and more, One Million Degrees supports college students and sets them up for success! We’ve created videos for their gala and to announce big partnerships. Ever since we started making videos for them, I dreamed of shooting a college graduation. It’s such a huge part of their story – they support college students and help them reach graduation. How could we not shoot graduation!? At least that was my thought process. This year, the opportunity finally presented itself.
At the beginning of the year, I pitched the idea to Jessica Douglas, Manager of Marketing and Communication. With graduation happening in May, I knew we had enough time to plan this video. I would need her to identify an OMD Scholar who was graduating, and I would take care of the production planning. As Spring approached, Jessica worked with the City Colleges to get a list of Valedictorians and Salutatorians at each of its colleges, and it was no surprise that OMD scholars filled the list! After learning more about some of those scholars, Jessica narrowed it down to Liz-Anne. While Jessica worked to identify the scholar, we got ready for graduation day. We scoped out the venue, put together a shot list, and started working on interview questions.
Liz-Anne with her Husband and step-son.
The day of graduation, Charlie met up with Liz-Anne and got footage of her outside of the venue, posing for photos with family and friends. He went inside to prepare for the ceremony, and got some amazing shots of Liz-Anne processing in, carrying the Olive-Harvey College banner. It was a special moment and Charlie shot it beautifully! He continued to get shots of her throughout the ceremony and of course filmed her walking across the stage.
Now that we shot the graduation ceremony, we needed to interview Liz-Anne! We set up a time to do her interview at Olive-Harvey College, along with her Program Coordinator Destiny. We interviewed them and got some b-roll of them together too. The last shot of the day was something I was really excited to get. I asked Liz-Anne to bring her cap and gown and planned to film her throwing her cap into the air in front of Olive-Harvey. This was the perfect shot to end the video!
The video came together beautifully, telling Liz-Anne’s story and how OMD supported her along her journey. We added in some stats through fullscreen graphics that supported the message of the entire video. All of the elements came together and made for an empowering video that really demonstrates OMD’s impact. This video should stay relevant for the organization for years to come and they can use it in a variety of ways. When I’m able to create a beautiful video that will help an organization continue their impact, I know I’ve done my job well.