Oatley Vigmond’s Accessible Halloween
The Barrie personal injury law firm staged a special barrier-free trick-or-treat event for children and adults living with disabilities—and the Ghost Bureau team was there to produce the video.
BY CHRISTOPHER SHULGAN, GHOST BUREAU PARTNER
One of the great benefits of producing content for companies happens when your clients are interested in promoting great causes. Ghost Bureau recently had the opportunity to chronicle a wonderful community event: An Accessible Halloween produced by the Barrie personal injury law firm, Oatley Vigmond.
An Accessible Halloween for All
The event saw 34 businesses in the Barrie community collaborate to create a barrier-free trick-or-treating event. The catch for Ghost Bureau? The assignment came with an incredibly tight 24-hour deadline—one that the Ghost Bureau team was able to meet with ease.
How to Create a Video on a Tight Deadline
Held from 2:30-5:30 p.m. on the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 29, the marketing team at Oatley Vigmond and the content producers at Ghost Bureau knew that the video would best be posted on the morning of October 31—less than 48 hours after the event concluded. The other difficulty was that Oatley Vigmond name is a premium brand. To meet the standards created by the firm’s previous content, the video needed to meet the highest standards for production quality—4k footage that was lit well and sounded great.
Preparing to Film a Live Video Event
The Ghost Bureau team was down for the challenge. To prepare for the run-and-gun doc-style capturing of the event video, we brought a Sony A7c camera on a DJI RSC2 gimbal, equipped with a Rode Videomic shotgun mic, for smooth shots that collected crisp, directional audio. We also brought a Sony A7iv camera set to capture 4K footage at 60 frames per second, to allow for some buttery smooth slow-motion footage.
Filming a Live Outdoor Event
The actual shoot went great. More than 50 families attended the outdoor event—a huge success. The children living with disabilities and their parents were only too willing to have our cameras chronicle their trick-or-treating. The interviews with organizers Karen Vigmond and Jim Vigmond went smoothly and the participants’ parents were happy to be interviewed about the importance of the event—a first-ever accessible Halloween event in Barrie.
Editing Video on a Tight Deadline
Once it was done, the clock started ticking. The Ghost Bureau team needed to submit their first cut for the end of day Monday, so that the marketing team could manage approvals for the asset to be posted to social feeds like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. We spent that Sunday night backing up the roughly ~150 GBs of 4K footage and made the proxies overnight. Then one of our video editors woke up at 5 a.m. on Monday morning and had the main interviews color-graded, sound mixed and processed by 9 a.m. Music selection was completed by 10 a.m. and the rest of the day was spent selecting our best B-roll and deciding which story notes worked best.
The first cut was shown to the rest of the Ghost Bureau at 3:30 p.m. that same day. Feedback and one final sound mix were next. Would that be done by 5 p.m.? Thanks to the editing team of Christopher Shulgan and Andrew Imecs, it was. A quick upload, and Oatley Vigmond’s marketing director provided her approval with minutes of our sending the link: “This is SO GREAT,” she wrote back—setting in motion an approval cycle that resulted in Oatley Vigmond’s marketing team able to post the video to all their social feeds at the perfect time: The morning of Halloween.
Seeking video production services for your company? Email hello@ghostbureau.com to request a quote.
Oatley Vigmond partner Karen Vigmond helps participants capture a moment from a wonderful event.
