“What if we reverse the order?” he mused. “Show a boy in his new suit, with the narration describing his carefree life, and then, using color grading and an emotional soundtrack, switch the tone drastically, and we’ll see it was only a dream — he’s really stuck wearing a stained and faded hand-me-down.”

Usher paused as we thought about his idea.

“Listen, I know it seems backwards, but the idea is to leave viewers with a forlorn feeling in the pit of their stomachs, to keep them focused on the need. I think this order, with the need at the end, will impact a donor more than just showing how the organization solves its clients’ problems.”

I glanced both ways and saw nods all around. It may have been unconventional, but the concept resonated with all of us.

I turned to Mordy Fisgus, our executive VFX (special effects) director.

“Can we pull it off, make viewers realize that the first half is only a dream?”

“We could always have a transition scene where the protagonist either has his head down, or he’s staring off into the distance, to show he was really daydreaming,” Mordy responded thoughtfully. “But I prefer a more subtle approach. Say I change the coloring of the two halves, with the first part in vibrant, almost overexposed colors, and the second part in darker, dreary coloring. People will get the subliminal message that the beginning, the ‘rosy coloring,’ was too good to be true, and the more muted coloring is the harsh reality.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

This kind of discussion played itself out for the rest of the videos as well, and ten minutes later, we’d hammered out concepts for each one.

Filming the parnassah clip at an office in Lakewood

Pre-production

Usher Weldler, who had come up with the concept, wrote preliminary narration scripts, and once RCN approved them, we started putting together footage requirements. The scripts are our blueprints, and as we go through them, we write a detailed list of exactly what visuals we’ll need for each shot. We break it down to three categories: locations, actors, and props. For example, for the scene with the girl coming home from school, we listed “school-age girl” in the actor category, “house for her to come home to” in the location category, and “binder, backpack, uniform” in the props category. Five of the RCN videos required two locations: ideal and reality, so for the Bobbie’s Place one, we needed a boy’s sparse-looking bedroom versus the Bobbie’s Place suit store. Next, our senior production manager Moshe Niehaus began scheduling by booking film crews, and we started hiring actors, arranging locations, and obtaining props, things like “Shabbos table food” and a basketball.

Casting call

We find actors in a variety of ways, depending on the style of the video. It’s generally simpler to use non-Jewish actors; we’ll post details of our shoot on websites designed for this purpose, and actors respond if they’re interested. But because these RCN videos were for a frum crowd and of a more nuanced nature, we needed actors with the right sensitivities, which meant taking a networking approach within the community. RCN announced that we needed boys to come to the park and play ball for the camp fund video, and we had enough volunteers for a competitive game! Kudos to the parents and kids who wanted to help out. I even had a cameo in the promo for the Tomche Shabbos division. We needed grocery store footage showing the meager meal the protagonist could afford. We shot the scene at Evergreen in Monsey on a quiet morning, and with no actor for the cashier, I was scanning the items myself, with the film crew angling the lens so only my hands would be in the video. As we filmed, a few real shoppers actually tried to check out on my line.

Lights-camera-action

We’re always juggling multiple schedules on any given shoot. There’s the crew, the director, the actors, and the location, each with their own time constraints. During our Monsey film shoots, Moshe Niehaus was actually directing another shoot for a different project of ours in upstate New York (yes, we always have multiple projects at any given time). Even though he was several hours away, he still managed to successfully juggle our logistics — and the logistics can be tough! For example, we used local schoolchildren in a few of the videos, and we quickly learned about a unique scheduling conflict when parents told us their kids needed to be done by 11:30 a.m. We didn’t realize how rigid a deadline that was until they explained that the schools wouldn’t let a child come in middle of class, so if they came after the 11:30 break, they’d have to wait a full two hours before they could go to school.

Filming the Bobbie’s Place clip

Callback

Positive client feedback and a successful campaign are great ways to judge the success of a campaign video, but the real way to tell is with the goose-bump test. A good video always has the ability to move me, even though I review several videos on any given day. I view it through a behind-the-scenes lens because I’ve been there building the whole production from the ground up, but if I still feel that raw emotion when the videos switch from the happy scene to the sad, I know it’s a success. That’s really what this business is all about — creating video productions that move people.

Going off-script

We do our best to be prepared, but something will always change at the last minute. With only ten minutes to go before we shot the office scene for the Partners in Parnosoh segment, I was told (very apologetically) that the office location we’d arranged would not be available. Baruch Hashem, the next person I reached out to about this had a suitable office in the very same building.

Technical tidbit

In each promo, there’s a moment when the scene switches from a wishful existence to the unfortunate reality. Our VFX department made sure that moment was highlighted correctly with a combination of cinematography and editing tricks. In the promo highlighting the camp fund, the script called for switching from a boy playing a competitive game of ball with friends in camp to the sad reality of him playing alone on his driveway. To accomplish this, at one point during the game filming, we had the camera zoom in on the ball until it filled the whole screen. Later, when we moved to the driveway, we did the same shot in reverse, starting off with only the basketball filling the screen and then slowly pulling out to show the full scene of the boy playing alone. When the two shots are placed one right after the other, they transition smoothly from one frame to the next and it looks like the camera is zooming in and out quickly, with the whole scene changing in that moment. It’s pretty cool!

Moshe Shindler is the founder and director of productions at Mint Media, a full service promotional video firm for corporate and nonprofit clients, based in Lakewood, New Jersey.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 971)