2019 Paul L. Busch Award- Ameet Pinto

Northeastern’s Dr. Ameet Pinto was recently awarded the 2019 Paul L. Busch Award from the Water Research Foundation. Dr. Pinto won a $100,000 prize, that will help him and his team develop a modular platform for low-cost and real-time characterization of microbial communities across the engineered water cycle.

As part of the award process, they needed a video highlighting his work for the announcement. The Northeastern College of Engineering came to us for it. We had worked on a video series for the NU COE earlier in the year and were happy to be back working with them again on this one.

Closed Captions for your videos

Our goal with any project is to give our clients the biggest impact from the videos we produce. We’re always thinking of ways to increase this impact. In line with that we are now going to include close captions with all of the videos we produce. Not only are we going to include them in the ones going forward, but we’re going to reach out to past projects and add them if the client would like! We’re doing this because it’s important.

Why are close captions important on video content?

Accessibility
Captions make your content more accessible to everyone, including the 20% of Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing. According to 3PlayMedia, 71% of people with disabilities leave a website immediately if it is not accessible.

Viewer Experience
Most of the video content we consume is on our phones. We’re typically watching our phones without sound or in noisy environments where we can’t listen to the content. In fact, according to DigiDay, since facebook defaulted to sound off rather than on, 85% of video views on happen with the sound off.

Our goal is to produce content that is compelling enough to switch the sound on, but people swipe through at such a rate that reading the first few lines on caption could be enough to get them to stop and watch. According to Rev.com Captions grab and hold your audience’s attention, people are more likely to watch your video to completion if they have the option to turn captions on.

According to Cielo 80% more people watch video to completion vs 40% for videos without.

SEO
Search engines can’t read video, but they can read text. Adding captions will help you rank on google and gain more views on YouTube.

Comprehension
Captioning provides another layer to the information your viewers are taking in. It helps comprehension, especially when people aren’t speaking clearly, technical or slang terms are used or dialects are different.

We’ll deliver all of our videos with a clean version, burnt in captioned version and a side cart file that can be uploaded to sites like YouTube and allow viewers to turn captions on/off. We’re doing this to help you reach more of your audience, don’t let your powerful messages be silenced, we’ll take care of it!

The Trustees: One Waterfront Event

The Trustees of Reservations is a non-profit land conservation and historic preservation organization.  One of their big initiatives is One Waterfront.

The One Waterfront initiative contributes to Boston’s quality of life by creating and managing parks and creates accessible, climate-resilient open space that brings value to the city.

We worked with the Trustees to cover this years event.  It was held in Boston’s Seaport with a view of the harbor which included a magnificent sunset during the speaking portion of the night.  We created a sizzle reel within 2 days which they sent out with the thank you email for attendees.  We also created the recap video you see above, which will live on their website and also help promote next years event.

Tiny Baby Shoe

Our latest music video. We worked with the multi-talented Ceara O’Sullivan from ImprovAsylum who wrote, sang and stared in this one.

Folia Health Company Video

Folia is an app where people can track their health trends. The thinking behind it is you might have small incidents like headaches every now and then, but by the time you get to your doctor for your yearly visit you don’t remember all of the these events . By tracking these events as they occur you’ll have a data set of symptoms that doctors can use to better track your health.

They reached out to us as they were getting ready to launch their Data Dividends program. In collecting all of this health data, Folia gives their users the option to anonymously contribute their data for research purposes. The Data Dividends program gives their users a share of the profits if Folia ends up selling any of the data.

In launching this program they were revamping their website and wanted a video that explained Folia as a company as well as this program.

Folia had an interesting backstory where the founders are really personally vested in the work. We were even able to film with one of the Co-Founder’s, Dan’s family. Stories like this really make for great videos and bring a personal side to the business and bring the viewer in on a deeper level.

Grill Boys Music Video

Our latest music video with John MacGregor and Alex Kagy from Improv Asylum.

Great Dog Rescue New England

Great Dog Rescue New England is a non-profit, shelterless, all-breed rescue group headquartered in Massachusetts. My personal relationship with them goes back to 2011 when we adopted our first dog through their organization.

We unfortunately lost our pup to an accident and got into their foster program as a way to help us cope. Their foster program helps brings dogs from the south, up to New England where they can meet interested adopters. We ended up keeping our 2nd foster, Lancelot and he is the best.

GDRNE asked us to produce a commercial for them that they could use to promote their cause on their website and social media. We were really excited to help out!

Working with Liz from Great Dog, who happens to be a Producer in her real job, we came up with a concept that we could take care of in a half day, and really effectively get their story across.

These dogs come from so many different backgrounds and end up working their way into the homes and hearts of their adopters, which we highlighted in the intro/outro. The rest of the video was shot inside of their meet and greet event where potential adopters can meet available dogs. There were so many cute pups around that we shot an overwhelming amount of b-roll, which was a joy to review later on!

The final piece has a good balance of information and emotion that will hopefully help many more dogs find their forever homes!

Festival Betances

Festival Betances, presented by IBA is New England’s longest-running Latino cultural celebration. Every year in Boston’s South End they host internationally acclaimed Latin musicians, traditional cuisine, arts and crafts, a greased pole competition, children’s activities like face painting and inflatables, and other treats that highlight the diversity of Latin culture.

We worked with Moira Studio to cover Festival Betances this year. Over the two days our crew of 4 covered the parade, concerts and the general Festival activities. We created a sizzle reel for them within a few days that highlights the spirit of the day which they used as a recap and will use for promotional purposes next year.

Boston Public Health Commission- Barbers for Health: High Blood Pressure PSA

The Boston Public Health Commission has hundreds of programs working to make a healthier Boston for all of its residents.  The Commission specifically seeks to help vulnerable populations that might be overlooked otherwise, one of these programs is the Healthy Hearts Barbershop Initiative.

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is a big issue with all races, but it’s an epidemic in the African American population.  This program was looking for a way to connect with this population and did so by seeking out barber shops.  There are national organizations they partnered with, the Barbers for Health and Million Hearts in Municipalities programs.  Their story was featured on some news stations which was the inspiration for BPHC to create a video, but we knew we could do much better.

When they came to me with this story I thought it was pretty amazing.  I love when people think outside the box and solve problems through common sense.  Rather than just telling people to go talk to their doctors, they bring the education to the people where they are already.  Then from there they can further spread the message by giving them information and telling them to talk to their doctor. Plus, with something that needs to be monitored like blood pressure, it makes sense to monitor it somewhere you go monthly rather than somewhere you go once a year or so.

We went to the barber shop and met with Lynus and Jamie and conducted a pre-interview to get their thoughts on the program, the issue of high blood pressure and the importance of barber shops in their culture.  They were full of personality and opinions so the toughest part of the process was cutting down what they said to a short script!  We used their responses to those questions to create a script in their own words and recorded their voice overs.

I’m really proud of how this video turned out.   We focused grouped the first cut with people in the target demographic and they all found it very effecting.  One of the best parts of this industry is being able to give a voice to organizations like this that people might not otherwise know about.

Insulet Corporation- Advocacy for Access

We recently completed the first round of a suite of videos for Insulet Corporation, makers of the tubeless insulin pump, the OmniPod.  

For people living with diabetes, there are a lot of medical supplies you need on a daily basis.  This can lead to issues with insurance companies not supporting a specific product that you want or need.  Insulet put together a website to support these people in their efforts to advocate for themselves and get what they need, Advocacy for Access.

To help promote the cause and give people inspiration and information on how to advocate, Insulet wanted to produce a suite of videos telling stories from people with diabetes.  In the first round of these videos we went to 4 people’s houses and captured their stories.  They varied from people living with diabetes themselves to care takers, and each of them brought a unique angle and ideas on how to advocate.

We took a piece of each individual story and created a compilation video that features a bit from each of the participants on advocacy as a lead video.  We’ll be adding to this suite on a regular basis.  The next batch will come from our shoot last week at the Children with Diabetes, Friends For Life Conference in Orlando.

Analog Devices- Trade Sizzle Reel

Analog Devices is multinational semiconductor company based in Norwood, MA. Over the last 2 weeks, they had booths at 2 trade shows in Boston, IMS and LiveWorx, both at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. They wanted to show their presence at these events on social media as well as at a Board Meeting the day after the Liveworx event, so they reached out to us.

Aside from the actual shows, Analog purchased some billboard advertising around the city leading up to the event. They not only wanted to show their presence at the events themselves, but their mark on the city leading up. We went out and captured photos and videos of the advertisements the day before each event to work into the final piece.

For each event, Colin shot broll from their booth and of the general event while I captured some time lapses and cut together same day edit sizzle reels. I really enjoy same day edits, they’re a challenge, but they’re also a rush which is fun. I cut together a short and long version of each event and worked in a few rounds of feedback right on the spot. We walked out of each event with 2 completed pieces of content and Analog Devices had pieces to post on their social media channels while the event was still going on.

EarlySense Employee Appreciation Day Video

In a typical shoot for a company video we’ll conduct numerous interviews. For the EarlySense Company video we had 7 interviews, each lasting 8-15 minutes. We took the best of this content to tell the Company’s story. However, in this case and most cases there was a lot of gold left un-mined.

We worked with EarlySense to repurpose some of this unused content. One of the ways we did this was for their Employee Appreciation Day. We created this quick video from content that didn’t make the full Company video but told the unique story of their employees and why they’re so important to the company.

Repurposing content like this is a very cost effective way to make the money you spend on filming video content go much further.

Better Chicken Initiative- Spaghetti Chicken

While a lot of the project we work on are full service- concept through final product, we can also help fill any gaps along the way. We did just that recently for the Better Chicken Initiative.

The Better Chicken Initiative (BCI) is Compassion in World Farming’s flagship program in the United States. Its mission is to improve the lives of chickens raised for meat—which comprise approximately 90% of farmed animals in America—through meaningful corporate engagement and public outreach.

BCI has their own production team based in California, but their Head of US Public Engagement, Nina Farley is based out of southern New Hampshire. Nina was looking to produce a “man on the street” style video getting people’s real reactions to a new phenomenon in chicken- spaghetti chicken.

We shot on a beautiful day in the Boston Common and Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Nina showed the interviewees that they were looking at normal supermarket chicken and they were all disgusted by the underside where the “spaghetting” was occurring. We were able to get plenty of great reactions in a half day’s shoot and sent the files off to BCI’s production team. They put together this video which shows the problem and rallies people to help fix it.

Northeastern University- Parkour President

We’ve done some projects with the various colleges at Northeastern University, but we do the most work directly for their marketing department, Northeastern Films.  Four years ago they hired me as a freelancer to shoot commencement and I’ve shot many events and pieces for them since.

Every year they create an entertaining video for commencement revolving around the President of the school, Joseph E. Aoun and this year’s took it to another level.  The team there, Benjamin Bertsch and Adam Fischer came up with a concept where the President would need to parkour his way to the graduation ceremony.

They hired a professional Parkour athlete, Dominic Chavez from Parkour Generations Boston and dressed him up as the president.  Along with myself they hired 2 other freelancers who are routinely on the path8 team- Chris Shannis and Evan Patten from Drones.Up.

The team from NU and Parkour Generations did a walk through before the shoot to figure out the best places around campus to showcase Dom’s Parkour skills.  We all did a practice shoot the day before the actual shoot to test out the angles with each stunt and see what worked and didn’t.  When it came to shoot day everything fell into place seamlessly.

The two stunts that were the most treacherous were a high jump off a balcony and a series of jumps on 6 inch wide planks with a 20 foot drop-off on the side.  It was pretty amazing watching Dom work and we had a great time filming.

Benjamin and Adam did a separate shoot with President Aoun to get the lead in and close of the video and some cutaways to sell the effect.  They did a great job on the edit, cutting together all of the various angles- we had up to 8 or 9 on some shots.  The final piece really came together well.  It debuted at commencement to a great reaction! 

Rhode Island Department of Corrections MAT Program

The RI Department of Corrections has a unique program called the Medication Assisted Treatment Program (MAT).  This program is helping to reduce opioid overdoses by medically treating inmates while they’re in jail and assisting them in continuing the treatment when they’re released.

This program has been very successful which has caused other jails and prisons from around the country to reach out and see how the program works.  These inquiries had gotten to such a large quantity that the leaders of the MAT program were inundated with these requests and couldn’t keep up with answering them and running the actual program.

One of their partners, Brown University reached out to us about creating a video to capture all of the information that gets repeated over and over again in these calls.  Putting this information in a video would not only save everyone involved a ton of time, but it’d also standardize the information everyone was getting on the program.

We went to the RIDOC for a 3 day shoot conducting 30-40 minute interviews with each person involved in the program, from the Wardens, to security, to their partner.  We worked through those interviews and put together a final piece which is about 90 minutes and gets all of the info across in a clear manner.

The section of the video above shows the MedLine.  This is where the inmates actually get their medication and it explains how that process works.  They were particularly excited about having this section on film as they got a lot of questions on how it actually works, and the visuals really help.

We get to work on a big variety of projects covering many industries and topics.  One of my favorite parts of the job is all of the information we get to learn along the way.  This project really showed me the real issue of the opioid crisis and how thinking differently and creating a program like this can make such a big difference on so many peoples lives.

RIDOC Director Patricia A. Coyne-Fague, Esq. said, “This video is a helpful tool for those who want to know more about our MAT program.” She continued, “The results are clear, the numbers speak for themselves. The program is working; it is saving lives.”

Northeastern University College of Engineering Co-op Video

We’ve done a lot of work with the various schools at Northeastern over the past few years. We were introduced to the College of Engineering last year when we put together their S-POWER Grant Video.

They came to us late in 2018 looking to put together a video showcasing their Co-op program. They were looking to play this video at their accepted students day to entice new students to join them. We put tougher this 3 minute video that does just that.

We interviewed 9 students in total who had various backgrounds and Co-op experiences, including one that was currently in a Co-op at Bose. The short form of this video doesn’t lend to getting deep into each of the 9 stories but I think the blend of experiences came together to show how many exciting opportunities students can have in Co-ops along with how important they are when looking for jobs.

We had planned on putting together the 2 or 3 best student stories into their own quick video, but after all of the interviews were complete they decided to do all 9. We took each of the interviews and created 9, 1-2 minute videos on each student that they’ll share on their website and social media channels.

EarlySense Company Video

We worked with EarlySense on a series of testimonial videos and product videos last year. They wanted to put together a video showing their company and their culture.

EarlySense is based in Woburn as well as Israel, so we based the shoot around their annual meeting where the whole company was in town. We came up with a loose script highlighting the key points they wanted to get out and created questions based off of those so the answers would be in the employees own words.

We started out the video with an open ended question which we quick cut together as an intro. This technique is nice for a video like this because it incorporates a lot of employees and brings some energy to the start of the video.

Colin and Vic shot all of the interviews and broll throughout the day and we also had photographer, Billie Weiss on hand doing corporate headshots. In one day EarlySense was able to knock out a full video shoot as well as update their website photos while everyone was in town. We were also able to repurpose some of the footage in a video for Employee appreciation day which we’ll post later.

Boston Red Sox Commercial- Now What?

Aside from path8, I work part time on the video production team for the Boston Red Sox. Every season the Red Sox put together a commercial, that they call the Anthem Spot. This commercial comes out before opening day and is always a piece that really pumps you up for the season. I edited on the Anthem spot in 2016- Two Words.

This year the team opened on the road with an 11 game road trip so we put together two anthem spots. Champs was released for the official opening day, and we put together Now What? for the home opener. Working on any commercial for the Red Sox is an honor and fun project but this one was even more special because I came up with the initial idea.

I was on a run home from the gym one morning in January wearing my Damage Done sweat shirt, which was a play on the postseason slogan of “Do Damage”. I thought it would be a cool visual, a jogger wearing that sweatshirt in the dreary winter months. It represented all of the excitement and joy of winning the World Series, but in an environment that was so past it- the celebration is over, we moved on, so…now what?

I immediately wrote out the initial script as soon as I got home and brought it up to our Production team and Marketing team who liked the concept. We worked internally and with the agency, CTP to really get the script to a great position and turned that idea into reality.

Shooting the running and kids playing scenes were one of my favorite parts of the project. We shot the running piece all around the city, but the shots we ended up using were 2 of the first we shot. Myself and 2 of my co-workers, Kellan Reck and Victor Martinez started out early one morning across the Charles River in Cambridge, which has a great view of the city. Victor was the “runner” and we got some real nice shots of him running along the river as the sun came up behind the skyline. These paired well with the shots of the kids playing catch that we shot in the city later that day.

I was super happy with how everything came tougher. These spots are great to work on, not just because of the content, but it’s such a great team effort. So many people give their thoughts and effort into the 90 seconds that it really elevates the piece above the other regular projects.

One of the best parts of the experience for me was going to Finish Boston and Soundtrack for the final color/sound mix. Seeing the colorist and audio engineer at work fine tuning the color and sound to make it perfect was amazing.

ResMed Resupply Testimonial Video

ResMed is a medical supply company who recently rolled out a new product, RedMed ReSupply.  ReSupply allows medical supply companies to automate the ordering process for their patients, saving everyone time and effort.

They started tested ReSupply at a few locations and wanted to highlight the success they had in the form of a testimonial video.  We traveled to one of these locations, Advanced Medical Solutions in Ypsilanti, MI.

We interviewed 3 of the AMS Employees that worked closely with the system as well as a patient who used it.  In a day’s shoot we were able to capture their stories along with the B-roll we needed to tell it.

On top of the video for ResMed, they wanted us to create a second video that would be more focused on AMS so we could give it to them as a thank you for participating in the process.

Especially with a new product like this, testimonial videos are a great way to showcase their effectiveness. The message coming from the customer, rather than yourself not only lends more validity to the claims, but also helps in building an even stronger connection with that customer.

Aunt Jenny's Party

AUNT JENNYS PARTY IS GONNA SUCK ASS, AUNT JENNYS PARTY IS GONNA SUCK ASS.  People were chanting it in the bathroom and at the lobby during intermission.  We’d just left the first act of Improv Asylum’s “Some Buddies in Here” show, which ended on a rap- Aunt Jenny’s Party and it was already stuck in everyone’s heads.

It was the funniest sketch I’d seen at IA and half way through the first time hearing it I thought- this has to be a music video.  The unfortunate thing about most improv show content is that it dies once the run of show ends, or even that night if it’s an improv segment.  Aunt Jenny’s Party had to go on!

Luckily, the Co-creator, John MacGregor was my improv teacher at the time.  A few months later I met with John and his partner, Alex Kagy and we talked about how to make AJP’s music video a reality.

They recorded the track with IA’s music director Steve Sarro and we were off and running.  We set up the shoot in 3 days, which worked out in chronological order- getting ready, the drive to the party and then the party itself.

We filmed the getting ready scenes at a friends apartment in the North End.  The intro of the song is stings over a voice mail, so we used the letterbox with flat color and slow panning shots to add a cinematic flair.

The commute shoot day came together very last minute as we were struggling to find a location that had a keypad, gate guard booth and gate all in 1 place.  We were going to fake it but then White Cliffs Country Club cake to the rescue.  I had filmed a wedding at White Cliffs and remembered there being a gate with a keypad, so I reached out to them as a shot in the dark and morning of they gave us the go!  It really couldn’t have worked out better and was literally what was in our heads for the scene.

We filmed the “getting the ice” piece at the Sunoco by Fenway Park, as it’s named in the song.  The 50 min drive to White Cliffs gave us plenty of time to film the driving scenes and also made us feel like we were really driving all the way to Aunt Jenny’s.

This part of the shoot really came together thanks to Billy Cox who stole the show as the gate guard.  John and Alex spoke with Billy while we were still at the Sunoco and got the final go from him.  We picked him up at his place in Dorchester on the way down.  He was fully committed to the role- even shaving his beard down to just a mustache in the White Cliffs parking lot.  

Aside from Billy, the Co-MVP of the day was his sandwich.  Our PA, Rocky Brown was on baby powder duty, making that sandwich look as old and dusty as possible.

The shoot went flawless, we got everything we needed and more.  Billy had so many good outtakes in the sketch portion that we decided to save it for the end credits.

The third shoot day was the actual party.  We rented an AirBnB in Southie.  I looked for the smallest AirBnBs I could find and found the perfect Aunt Jenny’s Condo.  It had a comically small love seat, had only 2 chairs, no TV and was super small.  All exactly how the song states.

The rest of the IA crew came up huge for the party.  Filling out the cast of characters were Kelly Dooley as Aunt Jenny, as she played in the show, Joey Lopez as Cousin Steve and the rest of the crew of the main stage along with some other members of the family as the party goers.

The party shoot was long, but we got through each scene one by one and got everything to wrap.  My favorite scenes were when they party got “crazy”- we shot in 120 FPS for some super slime dramatic shots of Aunt Jenny and her crew getting crazy.

We finished up the edit shortly after and here it is.  

I honestly have a good time working on every project we do at path8, but this one takes the cake for obvious reasons.  It was such a blast collaborating with 2 great comedians and all of the extras we worked with.  Start to finish we had fun in every part of the project, and everything went super smoothly.  Most fun of all was being part of bringing something from a hilarious song on stage, to an idea, to a reality.