Shape What's to Come

If you want to shape what's to come, start online.

I really want to relay the story about all of the effort that went into producing the video for Levi’s new social campaign “Shape What’s to Come”, for Job 73.

Levi's is creating a network of empowered women who want to change the world for themselves, the community and the world.  Shape What's to Come "is a place where women around the world connect with peers and mentors alike.  It’s a place to pursue your passion and channel it into something big – a new experience, a career or even a cause.  A community of women changing their worlds. Together, we share, inspire, grow."

I met my connection to the project, David Armano, Senior Vice President of Edelman Interactive and recent speaker at Montreal Webcom, because of a dinner hosted by Tara Hunt while he was in Montreal (Thanks, Tara!).  David was very cordial during dinner and sent an e-mail a few days later telling me that he found my web projects interesting and that Levi's had a new campaign that he wanted to find a way for me to work on for One Hundred Jobs.

After an initial phone interview with the Shape What's to Come marketing team, last Tuesday, one of the marketing managers called me up and asked if I could put together a web video to draw attention to National Adoption Month, which is November, BEFORE the end of November.  That gave me just 5 days to come up with a feasible concept, create a budget, assemble my production team, complete the necessary legal documents, find my video subjects, shoot, edit and complete the video. Good thing that in completing 100 Jobs, I have discovered I am extremely self-motivated, work well under pressure and can handle tight deadlines!

To keep with the theme of Adoption Month, I came up with the concept of locating families that had adopted children, interviewing them, and making the big reveal at end of video that they were amazing, unique kids, who had all been adopted.

The last five days have been an energetic blur!  I researched and made phone calls all afternoon to adoption agencies on Tuesday, created a budget and sent it in, contacted one of my videographer/editors on Tuesday night, received notice that my budget got approved Wednesday morning, researched music on Productiontrax.com, went through over 1000 songs, created legal contracts for videographer and interview subjects, through the help of YummyMummyClub.com located a foster care agency in Ontario called Bridgeway, connected with the director and she connected me with families of recently adopted kids, decided to travel to Ontario, got the travel budget approved by Edelman, figured out travel logistics with my production team, sent off release forms for families, finalized my concept in my head, gathered supplies, did laundry, took care of Max, and woke up Thursday morning to drive to Ontario.

WHEW!

After the fun, traffic-free drive, on Thursday night I continued my search for music, finalized my voice over script for Ashley Rhodes-Courter, author of Three Little Words: A Memoir and Youth Advocacy representative on Shape What's to Come.   On Friday, we filmed two amazing, loving families from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., drove to my parents in Niagara Falls for 8 p.m. scarfed down dinner, and began transferring video.  I stayed up until midnight trying to find music, but was still unhappy with my choices.  After getting up at 8 a.m. to begin our editing marathon, I wound up hearing my videographer's friend's song, "Hoot 'N Holler" by The Big Valley Light Orchestra and got approval to use the song in our video, 18 hours of video editing later we had a rough final assembly, woke up early again Sunday morning, edited for 5 more hours, rendered, exported and uploaded our director's cut. I just barely made the 3:10 Go Train to Toronto to take the 5 pm train back to Montreal, where I edited a shorter version of the footage we shot featuring just the baby and called it "Jingle Baby"!

Double Whew!

On Monday morning (yesterday?!), I sent the videos to my client, got feedback, got my videographer who was still in Ontario to reedit a shorter version by 5 p.m., uploaded it to Vimeo by 7 p.m. and then received final approval by 9 p.m.

Triple Backflip Whew!!!!!

Amazing what being motivated by a good cause and a strict deadline can do. And here are the web videos resulting from our intense and rewarding journey:



Director's cut:


Adoption Month Director's Cut from Aimee Davison on Vimeo.

And last, but not least, the adorable and effervescent Jingle Baby, Chloe:



The second version without music where you can hear me squawking to Chloe in the background:



Job 73 was absolutely one of my favourite jobs to date. What an experience: from working with the Shape What's to Come team and my very patient videographer to meeting the incredibly devoted and loving parents of the adopted children who have their priorities at the centre of what's most important: love.


Aimee