A creative twist unique to the Jewish music video scene

Client: Agudath Israel of America

Objective: Create a music video and a promotional video

Film locations: Path around a lake in northern New Jersey

Project Deadline: September 2023

The Proposal

Rabbi Shai Markowitz, director of Agudah’s Lefkowitz Leadership Initiative, asked me to produce something memorable for the organization’s annual campaign. We’ve worked as part of their video production team for the past three years, and I was excited to see what we could come up with this time.

The greatest marketing strength of an organization like the Agudah is also their greatest challenge: the sheer scope and variety of the services they provide. How do you put together a video that conveys the message of a special needs/yeshivah/parnassah/end-of-life/Daf Yomi Siyum HaShas services organization? How do you make a cohesive piece connecting all of these different branches?

Agudah pitched the idea of a music video. The lyrics would describe many of their divisions, and we’d arrange various scenes and setups to match them. Though I liked the idea of one song bringing it all together, I felt that breaking it into so many separate scenes would feel fragmented. In addition, setting up each scene properly would be tantamount to creating ten separate productions, which calls for a steep budget.

I countered with a slight tweak that could solve both of these issues and would provide a creative twist unique to the Jewish music video scene.

“Instead of filming all of these scenes individually, let’s have the singer walk down a long, meandering path,” I suggested. “He’ll encounter mini versions of what he’s singing about as the song and his walking progress.”

This would give flow to the production because the singer would take one journey, literally walking through the stations, as opposed to hard cuts from studio setup to studio setup.

This style also gives us more artistic freedom to build the stations we need in a more symbolic manner, allowing us to build smaller-scale renditions instead of large indoor sets, which also keeps the budget more contained. Last, we could tie the promo video to this concept with an Agudah representative walking down that same path of sets, giving a brief synopsis of each division as he passes its “station.”