Video: Hackathon for Good ‘20
The Ask: To document Apply Digital’s 2020 Hackathon for Good and produce an event recap for quick publication on all social channels. Shot completely remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Process:
Creative ideation and planning: Three weeks prior to the Hackathon, I sent out a company-wide recruiting shout-out over Slack, and found five participants ready and excited to help us out. Working in sync with the larger organizing team, I ensured each subject was assigned to a different Hackathon team. Finally, I hosted a pre-event workshop for each participant laying out what was required in terms of collecting b-roll of their day and also to schedule three check-ins (morning, noon, and at the end of the day) with each person on the day of the event.
The process: In order to streamline our work, my videographer colleague and I divided up the participants. Then, we got to straight to work with the early morning check-ins on our list. Shooting entirely through Zoom, we interviewed participants on camera, reshot for concise sound-bites, and helped collect b-roll through screen shots and Slack channel conversation. We also staged additional b-roll in our own home offices.
Post-production: Throughout the day, we had participants submit their footage into individual folders on Google Drive, and so when we weren’t busy with interviews, we were able to spend time processing and selecting clips to be considered for the final cut. We finished reviewing them that evening, so by the following day, before the Hackathon winners were even announced, we were ready with the bulk of the clips processed and already set up in order of narrative. Then, all that was left to do was to gather and shoot the winning team, again via Zoom and slice this into screenshots of their work collected during the event.
Results: This event recap video made it to our social feeds in record time, and was widely shared by both the winning organization and our community of partners and clients online.