SHINE CREATIVE

We're stoked! Last night we won our first Addy award for the video work we did with Live Baltimore. This series, Way to Stay, is particularly meaningful to us because it focuses on thriving families who have made the choice to stay in Baltimore City and raise their kids. We've got a real soft spot for our home city and love showing the positive side of an often negative story. The video that won the silver is about Federal Hill Prep and the families that come together on thei

As a challenge to advertising that puts products before people, brands are abandoning the coercive, interruptive format in favor of content that appeals to the emotional motivators of their customers. Emotional motivators are described as the feelings that drive a customer’s behavior and hint at the greater emotional needs that all humans possess. This article in Harvard Business Review; An Emotional Connection Matters More Than Customer Satisfaction, asserts: ‘Emotionally co

Switchblade Lemonade writes killer bios for entrepreneurs. We recently collaborated on a project and it changed the way we make films. Together, we killed the talking head. Switchblade Lemonade's founder Caroline Mays' own bio begins, “I’m a fugitive on the run. I come from a small town where kids fight with broken pieces of glass from their makeup cases. Sometimes you have to outrun a particular kind of destiny.” You can’t ask for a more cinematic intro. What Caroline and I

Q. How do we spice up an 'Influencer' campaign? A. When launching something bold and new, buy-in from the first responders of your brand is key—these are the folks in your immediate orbit who will spread the word and bring authenticity to your foundational efforts. They're called everything from influencers to ambassadors to launch leaders, mavens or just sometimes simply 'friends and family.' They and their sphere of influence are exactly who you want in your camp when it's

Live Baltimore Case Study: How We Transformed Negative Perceptions By Finding Emotional Value In Unexpected Stories. Q: How do you tell great stories when you're not sure what to say? Based on current local news and a certain cable subscription series optics, Baltimore might appear to have little to cheer about. Its tarnished image is reinforced by negative images on television and staggering crime stats. In the neighborhoods that struggle the most, an apathetic ache blankets

This project landed squarely in our wheelhouse; cocktails, delicious food and entertaining in style. We were excited when Jack Daniel's approached us with the desire to create an entertaining series with entertainment maven Maureen Petrosky. Client Objective Drive awareness among female consumers through winter/holiday entertaining content and use short-form pre-roll to drive users to watch the full video. Our Solution We worked with JD to come up with seasonal food pairings

This is the story of a 'reluctant client'—a video non-believer and a transformation story of the best kind for us. Our journey as filmmakers and video production entrepreneurs continues to bring us an interesting set of challenges for every new project. Sometimes, the challenge begins at the beginning--or before the beginning in this case. At the onset, the client had serious reluctance about the effectiveness of brand video. It was hard for him to imagine creating emotion, c

The Hero's journey is a roadmap for the viewer to enter and become a participant in the story. This is why this approach is so good for

Think of plot as a verb, as in, to draw a plan or map. You are simply defining the beginning, middle and end of your film and drawing a line

Our day went from zero to shitshow in 1 minute. We needed some additional shots to accompany the interview of an exec for a very important and expensive corporate video; simple stuff like talking to a colleague, looking over a report, answering the phone. In the moment we were deciding on the action, the exec, out of nowhere, began insisting we capture her doing burpees in the hallway. Within minutes she’d hijacked our production to indulge her aspirations of creating a behin

When it comes to video, one is the loneliest number. As we were wrapping up the final details on our video project, our client remarked, “Now what?” His company had taken a small risk by creating a short video series that ended up far exceeding their expectations. They were sold on video. They were in love with video. But, now what? For many clients, creating a video is seen as an answer to an immediate need: to create brand lift, to make an announcement, to speak to new mark

“You can’t sell something until you’ve entered someone’s mind.”- Beth Comstock, CMO of GE. We were shooting an interview of a C-Suite executive at a major healthcare company. He was concerned about his performance so we assured him he’d be pleased once he watched the final, edited video. “Oh, I’ll never watch this video,” he replied with a dismissive smirk. A STILL FROM CENTER STAGE'S VIDEO 'FROM CLOTH TO STAGE' This key member of the leadership team was trashing his own vide