Event Endorsement: Guided by Senior Production Manager Moshe Niehaus and in collaboration with the BMG administration, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel, and Rav Yitzchok Sorotzkin vouch for the event’s significance. Their unified call was the catalyst for the Maamad’s unprecedented success

Building Momentum

Associate VFX director Jeremy Lewis went to work on the promos. He practically locked himself in his office for three days, barely coming out for fresh air or coffee. Video production is a form of art, and sometimes I just have to let the “artist” work and wait to see what he will produce.

When Jeremy showed me the finished promo, I knew I had made the right call. He had compiled 60 seconds of powerful BMG footage, including clips of the massive batei medrash with the sea of black and white swaying over shtenders, showing both the scope and size of the yeshivah, but also the close-up, tight shots of the individuals to help put faces to the numbers of thousands of yungeleit. He then took clips from an interview with Rabbi Yosef Heinemann in which he discusses Rav Aharon Kotler’s vision for the Lakewood yeshivah, and after adding a reverb (reverberation, or echo) effect, he placed the audio to play while that footage showed.

The result encapsulates everything the Adirei HaTorah movement represents, both in content and raw emotion, in 60 seconds.

But even as things started taking shape, producing the complete package was still a very fluid process for us and BMG because we needed to figure out the perfect angle and direction for the other videos. Senior video editor Mrs. Rivky Liebenstein spent days building a full feature video reviewing the history of the kollel check, all the way from the days of Rav Aharon.

Then came the call from BMG.

“The video is great, but… we want to keep the focus more on the chashivus of the yungerman than on the kollel check raise. Can you change that?”

This essentially meant creating a brand-new feature from the ground up. Deep breath. (P.S. We were able to use the history piece as part of the bus video, so it didn’t go to waste.)

Executive VFX Manager Mordy Fisgus reviews Jeremy Lewis’s masterpiece

Location, Location, Location

As you may remember, the first Adirei HaTorah asifah was supposed to be held in the CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton, New Jersey. But with the asifah only 12 days away, 10,000 seats were sold out, with waiting lists filling up by the minute. The organizers decided to switch to the larger Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, which would comfortably fit the 25,000-plus that ended up attending.

Obviously that venue change brought BMG plenty of logistical headaches with it, such as transferring the tickets that had been given out, but it created specific challenges for our video production team, too.

Firstly, BMG had asked us to prepare a feature video for those taking coach buses to the event. Now, the distance from Lakewood to the CURE Arena is about 35 minutes, and we created enough content to match the drive. Philadelphia, however, is about double the distance, and we suddenly needed 30 more minutes of content.

BMG understood the issue and gave us to access their historic footage archives, but it took us hours to sift through it all and pull the relevant content.

Another difference was the sheer number of LED screens, walls, and ribbons at the larger stadium. In under two weeks, we had to create content to fit Wells Fargo’s detailed signage specifications. In addition to coming up with the text and footage we would run, there was a lot of math involved in this project, because we needed to configure animations to play on uniquely sized screens.

Bureaucracy

We carefully reviewed the 56 (!) pages of specs from Wells Fargo Center and began connecting with those responsible for running digital signage. We quickly learned that three different companies operated in the Wells Fargo AV department, each with its own team and very limited responsibility. Every question we asked ended with two more people being added to our email chain — and the question ultimately being passed on to others. It was complicated and time-consuming, and for the most part we just figured things out on our own and moved forward designing custom screens and banners.

A few hours before Adirei HaTorah was scheduled to start, we hit a snag. There were several “eleventh hour” changes to our digital signage (not uncommon when it comes to any event), and I brought along a USB flash drive with the updated files.

The stadium’s AV (audio-visual) personnel gave me a stern look.

“There’s no way our IT department will let you plug an outside device into our systems,” he informed me.

Fair enough. I offered to send it to him via Dropbox. No dice — apparently they didn’t have a paid subscription, and our files were too large for their free version.

With no alternatives left and go-time fast approaching, I gave them our Mint Media account login information. I watched as they began downloading the files to their systems — and then I did a double take. I could only stare incredulously as the icon showed several hours of download time.

“We don’t use Internet cables here, only Wi-Fi,” the disinterested stadium employee said. “Everything goes pretty slowly.”

Seriously?!

Baruch Hashem, all our material downloaded just in time.

Sky-High Drama: Aiming for aerial shots, our drone operator was detained due to an airspace mix-up with a nearby Major League Baseball game. We captured stunning views before the unexpected ground halt!

By the Numbers

10,500+ square feet of screens at Wells Fargo — and yes, we created content for many of them, including the two ribbons that wrap around the entire stadium. In order to play properly, the video couldn’t simply be looped, it needed to be built to spec to fill that entire long and narrow strip

16 cameras altogether, between the lockdown angles manned by the AV company BMG had hired and our cinematographers who moved freely around the stadium

4.53 terabytes of footage shot at the event

Blooper Reel

The start of an event is prime time to capture shots of crowds of people entering the building. In addition to a cameraman, I also stationed a drone operator outside to get aerial footage. When I radioed him to check how things were going, I got no response, but I assumed his hands were full and didn’t think much of it. But after a few more check-ins went unanswered, I started wondering if everything was okay.

Just then, I heard a faint whisper from my radio: “I’m in the back of a police car.”

Apparently an officer had seen him flying the drone in the protected airspace and had detained him until he could verify our credentials.

This wasn’t our first time flying drones, and we had done our due diligence, with Moshe Niehaus acquiring permission from three sources: Wells Fargo Center, the two teams that use the stadium, and the airport around the corner. While straightening out the confusion, we learned there was another stadium nearby, that of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team — and they were actually playing a game at the time! Anytime a drone crosses their airspace, they get an alert and the police immediately head down to investigate.

I explained the situation to the officer, and our cameraman was released in time for the main event with the strict warning to leave the drone in the trunk of his car. But yes, we did get some great footage before that!

Mapping the Mega Screen: Navigating 56 pages of specs amid a tight timeline and venue change, we dove deep into Wells Fargo Center’s 10,000 square feet of LED screens

Callback

Anyone who was at Adirei HaTorah can tell you the crowd was on fire, and the feelings of achdus and simchas haTorah were tangible. My crew worked hard all night to capture the range of emotions on film. One of my cameramen who was stationed on the dais was lugging around heavy gear, engaged in strenuous work nonstop, and surrounded by the heat of 25,000 men dancing together. He was sweating bullets. As he was making his rounds, a rav on the dais (who we have not been able to identify) reached out and wiped his forehead with a napkin.

“It was the greatest act of kindness I ever experienced,” the cameraman told me later that night as we were packing up.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 980)