“Obviously, our mission statement and goal remain the same, but we need to find a new way to express them”

Client: Adirei HaTorah

Objective: Multiple features for live event, plus highlight feature

Film Locations: Mint Media green screen studio in Lakewood, New Jersey

Project Deadline: June 16, 2024

The Proposal

This would be Adirei HaTorah’s third year making a grand event; they were calling it The Chazaka. In the past two years, the organizers had asked us to prepare interview-based features, which meant filming gedolei Yisrael and rabbanim from around the globe expressing their admiration and giving brachos to the yungeleit. This part is logistically the most complicated, as all the gedolim have incredibly busy schedules serving the klal, so when we were told they wanted something similar for this year’s presentation, senior production manager Moshe Niehaus hit the ground running.

Moshe had already made some calls and penciled in tentative dates when a different member of the Adirei HaTorah team reached out. He was concerned, he said, because he wasn’t convinced this style was the right approach.

“Let’s be honest, this is the third year in a row we’re having this event. If the crowd feels like the program is copy-pasted from last year, it’s almost not worth having it,” he said. “Obviously, our mission statement and goal remain the same, but we need to find a new way to express them.”

At this point it was about a month before the big day — that doesn’t leave a lot of room for dramatic changes — but we arranged a conference call with the organizers to see if we could reach a consensus.

Adirei HaTorah is a movement more than anything else, and the passion from everyone on the line came through loud and clear. Ideas flew fast and furious, ranging from having the yungeleit themselves speak, to highlighting stories of mesirus nefesh for Torah, to having live musical accompaniment for the video. However, with only four weeks remaining to create a world-class production for the estimated 25,000 attendees, we needed consensus now.

After everyone had contributed their two cents, I tried compiling everything into one cohesive plan. I suggested we write a script highlighting the lifestyle of a serious yungerman, with the yungeleit themselves narrating.

“And if you really want the presentation to feel completely different, let’s build it as one production instead of four or five individual features. So if the first script ends with the words ‘ki heim chayeinu,’ have the band play the song immediately, and then have them continue with another song that will segue into the opening of the next video,” I said. “This will make the 20 minutes of video feel like part of a seamless 45-minute production.”