We make videos for schools. Though designed to represent culture, they also create culture. Our project with the St. Bernard’s School of New York is a wonderful example of this.

To give kids a big team project to work on that produces a final product that lasts forever is wonderfully rewarding for everybody involved.

There are other schools that host intensive periods, often called J-terms. At the outset of this Pingry project, we are now officially open to this model of collaboration.

Two boys who discovered a passion for filmmaking at boarding school, come back fifteen years later to share it with their school.

Yet sometimes the California dream takes up the room. How does your real, quality, intensive academic offering balance its reputation against “California: chill out and surf“?

We typically have three days to come up with the full, completed script of a video that will meet the commandments. Three days, otherwise we make Alesi’s job much harder. Each day we take for writing takes one day from her production planning. The relationship has a perfect pressurised balance. Pressurised, indeed, because each day I don’t deliver a script is added pressure to the creative process that is already drowning in expectation.

The proof is in the pudding as they say. As of now, enquiries and applications are up 129% and 182% respectively as compared to the previous year. Video is simply a medium. For most, it does little. For those who use it right, it will make all the difference. We’re in the business of results. If you’re going to hire a film crew, you better hope to see return on your investment.

From a production perspective, this project was beyond extraordinary. Having to coordinate so many people, describe to them how to film, how to get good sound and how to send it to us all the while not personally knowing any of the senior class and doing it between three totally different timezones was, as the cliche has now come and gone, an “unprecedented circumstance”.

I’m a filmmaker, so when I describe the things I deem fun I will quickly gravitate towards creative pursuits that involve the combination of moving images and sound. It took me a lot of years to realize that others weren’t as pumped about this as I am. Consider the fact that you’re putting educators in front of the camera to talk about pedagogy. Big surprise they’re buzzing about it, it’s literally their job. You WANT teachers who dig pedagogy, you just need to separate that from how you market to 13 year-olds.