Can You Produce 8 Videos In A Few Months?

Early this past summer I was asked to produce 8 videos (4 longer form and 4 short) for a dinner gala that would take place in mid November. It was a big project that would encompass doing pre-production scouting remotely, shooting in several cities.

I jumped at the chance. Over the summer I worked with a colleague to set up 3 shoots in 3 cities to interview 10 people, 4 of whom who were being inducted into the Wireless History Foundation Hall of Fame on November 11, 2021.

The Wireless History Foundation is a nonprofit organization formed to preserve and promote the history of the wireless industry. Wireless products and services are continually and dramatically changing the way people worldwide live, work and play. The Foundation was formed by wireless pioneers to preserve the lessons of wireless for the benefit of future entrepreneurs and innovators.

I took this picture near our location in Seattle.

The secret to producing large projects is to assemble a team. You can't do everything on your own. So after working to schedule all the interviews in the different locations, I flew to Green Bay (and got stuck in two airports for about 8 hours!). I drove to Washington, D.C. for 3 days of interviews. I flew to Seattle to get another 4. And all of this over the course of 3 weeks. On the first two trips I brought another crew member (it's always nice to work with someone you know in these fast moving situations) and on the last one I was able to work with some great guys locally.

Then came the editing. I ran a team of 3 editors (plus me) to assemble the videos, find appropriate music and b-roll and do audio mixes on them. All of them did stellar jobs and went above and beyond to make sure the videos looked and sounded as good as they could.

A still of Dale Hatfield from our interview in D.C.

Then off to D.C. again to run more interviews and capture the event on film!

It was so much fun, though the schedule ended up being exhausting. We starting filming interviews in September and had all 4 videos ready to go by the beginning of November!

The client was very happy with our work, and I think they turned out really well!

This was a great project, and I look forward to helping the Foundation in the future. And I hope that if you need anything created, large or small, you'll give me a shout!