Case Study #1 - Branded Content Event Video
The Result
Project Overview
In 2013, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) came to us with seemed like a simple request. They asked us to produce “sizzle reel” of their annual Jewish Women’s Conference. While meeting with organization, it became apparent that they weren’t quite sure what they needed and asked for our direction. We helped them define the goals for the video, studied their past videos and researched the best videos from other nonprofits. From there, we crafted a plan to capture the best video content possible on the day of the conference while minimizing costs.
We delivered a video that told a story about the day in a visually stunning and interesting way, instead of stringing together a bunch of fun but unrelated clips like you’d see in a sizzle reel.
Project Pre-requisites
Before coming in, we needed to research organization to find out who their members are and how to reach them on visual and emotional levels.
Project Timeframe
One week, from shooting to end product: one 5-minute video to use within the organization and one 2-minute video to put onto YouTube.
Project Deliverables
One 5-minute video to use within the organization and one 2-minute video to put onto YouTube.
“Ezra Productions researches every detail before beginning a project and makes sure that they are giving the client what they want from beginning to end.”
Challenges & Solutions
We had never seen the venue so we needed to figure out where to interview people privately. We decided against putting people against the same old boring background, and instead shot the interviewees wherever we found them in order to vary up the visual content.
The turnaround time for two videos was particularly quick, so we worked with NCJW before the conference to secure and approve graphics to save time in post-production.
Conferences are not particularly interesting from a visual standpoint, so our cinematographers shot from varying perspectives to add life to the video.
Feature Spotlight
Emotionally Compelling Cinematography
Conferences can be difficult to make visually interesting so we made sure to capture the emotion of the conference and to film from unique angles to make the story more engaging.
Directed Interviews
Our director put together questions for the interviewees beforehand based the goals of the video so that she could direct each of the interviewees to give the content that we needed.
Cinematic Music
We searched for music for the videos that helped to communicate the story of the day. We stayed away from cheesy music and instead licensed music from talented independent artists.
Quick Turnaround
Both the 5-minute internal video and the 1.5-minute external video were delivered within one week of the conference.
Reflections on the Project
It was a gift to be able to experience such an uplifting conference while getting to film such inspiring women. We loved the planning process and then weaving together all of the footage we shot in a way that would increase their ticket sales for future conferences. We are now NCJW’s “go to” video production company, and have covered other conferences for them such as their National Lobbying Convention in Washington, DC.