I creative directed an ad campaign for GoFundMe centered around black joy. It was really great to be a part of the process from start to finish, from pitch, to pre-production, to shoots with talent to post production and rollout.
First I created a Google slide deck to pitch my creative vision to the client. I was given a color palette and a brief to focus on dreams and positivity. There would be a total of 8 videos following real life GoFundMe heroes who have made amazing campaigns that helped fulfill their dreams.
The tagline was GoFindYou, a play on GoFundMe. The subjects of the videos did things as varied as starting farmers markets in food deserts to creating creating a cross country dog grooming business.
My pitch deck included a rough storyboard on one side, and a Voice over on the other, along with a description of the video and a motion reference.
Official colors and squiggles that represent the exuberance of the 8 videos.
While thinking of my concept, I had to keep in mind that these are real people and not actors, so I needed to allow enough flexibility to make a beautiful video with a remote shoot with people who aren’t necessarily comfortable in front of a camera. The shoot would also take place in both homes and studios across the US, so I needed to get a consistent look across all locations.
I settled on a stop motion style where the talent could be shot with a drop kit and 1 professional video person to guide them. In this style, they wouldn’t have to be on camera for a sustained period, I could choose the best expressions and movements, and the green screen, shotlist, and lighting guide would ensure that there was a consistent look across all 8 shoots.
From there it was a week of script writing. I looked at all of the original GoFundMe campaigns and read the transcripts of previously done interviews to create a script. I wrote in a way that was colloquial as possible because I wanted the scripts to have the same cadence as the talent’s natural speech. Almost none of them had delivered voice over before so I wanted the process to be as smooth as possible. Once the first 4 scripts were delivered and approved, I created this somewhat unhinged shotlist, along with a written guide of what the talent should wear and expect from the shoot. I juggled overseeing the shoots and worked on animating the videos simultaneously.
There were 5 animators (including myself) involved during the 2 month project that came in and out depending on their availability. The pace was pretty intense, so I made sure that there was a starter file and elements to choose from, and did quality control in frame.io to make sure that the work matched the original storyboards and that the client was happy. After the final videos went tot the client for approval, I helped create final banner ads and assets for web.
