There are many, many hours put in to each video that are never seen in the final product. And each new project brings new experiences and memories for us. Recently, we had an opportunity to continue our collaboration with Lee Doyle of Credible Communications and add a second chapter to the series of fundraising videos we’ve produced together for CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture).

Lee is a pleasure to work with and brings a vast amount of experience and ideas to this meaningful project. When she was asked to produce the first video for CUESA’s Foodwise Kids program and assemble the right crew, she chose to collaborate with One to One Box because of our extensive experience in kids/nutrition/videos. That first video, which is still featured on the CUESA website was such as success (helping to raise $26,000) that when CUESA approached Credible Communications to create another fundraising video, Lee asked us again to help spearhead both production and post.

On this video, Lee and CUESA wanted to add a second chapter to the Foodwise Kids story about educating elementary school children in San Francisco about healthy, sustainable food, one that explained how the program was having a positive impact with families.

The Foodwise Kids program takes children to local farmers’ markets, introduces them to quality produce, and provides them an opportunity to participate in the journey of food from source to table. The program includes meetings with farmers, cooking classes, and tastings. CUESA adds another dimension to the program by letting kids harvest their own fresh produce, and then take it home with a recipe to share with their family.  The hands-on experience provides students with a much deeper understanding about where their food comes from. The genuine engagement and pleasure of these children was a big part of what made the video so successful.

For a project like this, we generally plan interviews with key stakeholders and clients who can best share an organization's goals, mission, and success. We’ll also include “b roll,” which is contextual location footage that illustrates the concepts being spoken about. While most videographers, ourselves included, use b roll as a way to bridge cuts in the interview footage, it is also essential to justify their place in the video by adding depth and nuance to the points being made. For this reason, we always take extra care in the gathering and selection of b roll footage.

Another, related category is what we refer to as “process footage,” which includes the activities or work-in-progress of the business or organization being profiled. Process footage provides a fly-in-the-air perspective that can be powerful and moving but requires care and discretion in the planning and permissions required.

For the CUESA video, we included interviews, process, and b roll of the kids whose passion for food and cooking could be seen coming alive before our eyes. Over the course of a single day, producer Lee Doyle and the video crew traveled to multiple locations, from the Ferry Building market in San Francisco to households in Alameda and the East Bay. The half-dozen interviews provide structure for the video while the b roll and process footage shot in people’s homes gave it warmth and authenticity. This video helped to raise nearly $40,000 for the Foodwise Kids program!

As collaborative projects go, this one could not have gone better. There are so many things that I love about this video (food, education, collaboration with a great team), but I am especially proud of the work done by Zahra Axinn who as video editor did the time-consuming work of logging the footage and editing it together. Lee oversaw the entire process and delivered the final cut to CUESA.

We’ll have more food and wine videos to share with you soon. Until then, be sure to follow us socially for more inside takes on how we create our videos.