We partnered with Central Oregon LandWatch to produce a series of eight documentary-style videos featuring individuals connected to Skyline Forest, located just outside of Bend, Oregon. This video series has currently amassed more than 13 Million views resulting in rapid sign-ups and wide spread awareness for the Save Skyline Forest campaign.
SAVE SKYLINE FOREST
PRE-PRODUCTION
The Initial Idea
When pitching a story-focused ad campaign, our team first constructs a project outline, featuring the primary strategy, a logline, synopsis, three act summary (if needed), budget, schedule, and workload outline. Accompanying this document is a carefully crafted storyboard that brings the whole project into the visual spectrum. Each hand-drawn image illustrates the shots, camera movements, and angles we aim to achieve, which helps us abundantly with scheduling and location scouting. This visual representation details how the frames will seamlessly blend together, bringing the entire campaign to life.
Below, you’ll see two documents titled “What Do You See?” This was just one of the initial ideas we drafted for the Save Skyline campaign. Although the "What Do You See" concept didn't materialize, the storyboard vividly conveyed our creative potential and the immersive storytelling we envisioned for the campaign.
“What Do You See?” Storyboards
Original Concept featuring a professional runner
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Story, Schedule, Shoot
Once we solidify the concept, we craft a story using key questions that drive the interview. These questions, consistent across multiple interviews, create a common thread throughout the campaign. Simultaneously, we scout locations and begin scheduling two types of interviews: “pre” and “principal.”
Pre-Interviews help the team and featured individuals get to know one another, fostering a better understanding before conducting the principal interview. During this phase, our director, producer, and cinematographer connect with the subjects on a personal level, developing a deeper understanding of their stories.
In the Principal Interviews, we highlight each interviewee's authentic personality while carefully constructing the narrative of the conversation. We invite them to share spontaneous thoughts and significant insights beyond the prepared script, often revealing crucial aspects of their stories. This approach ensures our campaigns are genuine and compelling, effectively resonating with our audience.
Daily Stills
At Camp Five Films, we understand the anxiety that comes with waiting for a project to progress, no matter how long or short the wait may be. To ease this, we take pride in our ‘daily stills’ deliverables, which we aim to provide within one business day of each principal shoot. Our process involves selecting the top takes and organizing them into stacks of three, showcasing the compelling diversity of frames from each shoot day. While dailies are typically only utilized for coverage review and planning, we often like to utilize them to generate excitement around the project.
Generating Excitement can be as simple as posting one or more of these images and highlighting the progress of the production. Daily Stills also build anticipation and actively engage your audience. By delivering these curated stacks promptly, we strongly encourage clients to share them widely on all social platforms.
POST PRODUCTION
Radio, Rough, Fine, Final
Our post-production process is efficient and organized, ensuring that our clients consistently receive a polished final product. This method, utilized by hundreds of production companies worldwide, involves four primary stages: Radio, Rough, Fine, and Final. Each stage provides excellent checkpoints for clients to review and critique progress.
The Radio Edit uses vocal and musical tracks to set the pace and outline the story. We find that video footage can be distracting during this phase, so this deliverable contains only captioned audio and a black screen. Next, we assemble the first edit, or “Rough Cut,” by compiling all the footage and organizing it into folders or ‘bins’ labeled “Interview” or “B-Roll”, to name a few. We then select the most compelling shots and sequence them on top of the approved audio to form a preliminary version of the video.
Following this, we Fine-tune the edit to create a coherent and engaging narrative, often involving several rounds of internal revisions based on feedback from the director and producer. Concurrently, sound design and mixing are conducted, adding necessary audio elements, enhancing dialogue clarity, and incorporating music. Color correction and grading are then performed to ensure visual consistency and enhance the film's overall look. Finally, titles, graphics, and any visual effects are added before the project undergoes a final review and is rendered into its Final format for distribution.
Final Thoughts
After the final delivery is approved, we take a moment to reflect on the journey we've shared with our clients, and as the project rolls out, we help spread awareness. At Camp Five Films, every project is more than just a task—it's a collaboration, a responsibility, and a shared vision brought to life. We're grateful for the trust our clients place in us and proud of the stories we get to tell together. Our goal is and will always be to create content that leaves a lasting impact on the world that gives us life.