Category: Promotional

The History of San Francisco’s Waterfront

Posted on by Slow Clap

In 2018, the City & County of San Francisco passed a proposition to reinforce the Seawall, a barrier that protects the City’s waterfront from flooding. The Seawall is over 100 years old and is in desperate need of reinforcements to protect it from earthquakes and sea level rising. As part of the project’s overall budget, Slow Clap was selected by the Port of San Francisco to produce videos on an as-needed basis. The Port wanted to tell San Francisco’s rich waterfront history as a reminder of how much has evolved over the years to adapt to a changing city, and to get residents ready for another big period of change. The Seawall’s upgrades are likely to span decades and cost taxpayers billions.

“Working with the Port and Civic Edge for four years on this contract has been amazing. It’s so rare that you get to form such a deep working relationship, as the Port’s exclusive video content producer, and get to help define the story of a government agency.”


– Daniel Lichtenberg, Creative Director, Slow Clap

Approach

The Port wanted to tell the history of San Francisco’s waterfront in just a few short minutes, leaving local residents with a strong sense of history and a greater understanding of what’s at stake if we don’t adapt fast enough. In order to quickly communicate this, Slow Clap thought the best course of action would be to find and license archival photographs from the past 100+ years, and create a “timelapse” wherein our archival photos are juxtaposed with video footage shot in the present. If we were to find the right photos that lined up with the perfectly filmed scenes from today, this would clearly and succinctly communicate how much has changed, and how much of San Francisco’s waterfront is on land that formerly was under water.

“We wanted to give comfort to San Franciscans with the message that things are always changing and that’s the magic of the waterfront – we get to weigh in the direction that we want to go.”
– Amber Shipley, Managing Partner, Civic Edge

Pier 7 and the Embarcadero Freeway (1970)

Pier 7 and the Embarcadero Freeway, 1970Pier 7 and the Transamerica Building 2020

Pier 7 and the Transamerica Building, 2020

 

Execution

Over the course of almost a year, Slow Clap dug deep into the archives and found the perfect archival photographs to contrast with images of today. This included photographs from the gold rush, the 1906 earthquake, the Seawall’s construction in the 1910s, Fisherman’s Wharf in the 1950s, MLB footage from the 1990s, and numerous other photos. What isn’t reflected in the final video, though, is that our team pulled several hundred archival photos in order to whittle it down to the perfect photos and spent months tracking them down and licensing them.

“We really wanted to capture the significance, beauty, and transformation of the waterfront. Finding the most compelling photos through research and proper licensing of each image was crucial.”


– Nicole B Wilson, Associate Producer, Slow Clap Productions

Challenges

Each photo had to match perfectly with a compelling present-day scene. We identified the exact location where each archival photo was shot, scouted the street corners first on Google Earth to make sure the contrast from past to present was compelling, and then in person to get the perfect camera match, procured permits for filming, and then used semi-transparent print-outs of the photos to get an exact match during filming.

Behind the Scenes SF Port

Behind the Scenes at SF Port, 2020

Result

The final video transitions from past to present day with a seamless, surprising, and impactful crossfade that immediately communicates to our audience the changes along the waterfront. An informative narration and motion graphics further reinforce the past to the present theme. Viewers are left with a clear picture of what’s at stake as the Port of San Francisco prepares for the future of our waterfront, with the Seawall project and beyond.

This video first premiered at the 2020 Oceans Film Festival in San Francisco, with plans to launch on the Port of San Francisco’s YouTube and Facebook pages. In the meantime, the Port has used the video at numerous community engagement events. In 2023, Slow Clap won the Gold Telly in Branded Content for Government Relations.

 “We love working with the Slow Clap team and in all my experiences, there is always so much creativity. I admire their ability to polish and execute a creative idea.”
– Amber Shipley, Managing Partner, Civic Edge

The History of the San Francisco Waterfront

Best Practices for Filming at Home: A Slow Clap Brainstorm

Posted on by Slow Clap

As we continue to navigate our “new normal” during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Slow Clap team met up for another brainstorming session to discuss how to film content at home. Whether video conferencing on Zoom, Teams, WebEx, Google Meet, or any other platform, we discuss some of the best practices for filming at home, and how to make your user-generated content look great. We cover lighting, framing, recording tools, audio and microphones, as well as editing it all together. Check out the session below.



If you have any questions about what we discussed contact us here.

#blacklivesmatter

Posted on by Slow Clap

At Slow Clap Productions, we believe in authentic storytelling. We believe all voices should be heard, and that everyone has a story. We stand behind the Black Lives Matter movement and with our friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors of color who are sharing their authentic stories through protest, murals, social media posts, and conversation.

The injustices that members of the black community have suffered cannot be ignored. The only way we can grow as a community, city, and country is to acknowledge and address the systemic racism that black people face every day.

Prejudice, bigotry, racism, and hatred of any kind should be condemned. That’s why at Slow Clap, we dedicate a portion of our working calendar to pro bono and below market rate work, partnering with organizations committed to racial equity. We’re thankful for our partnerships with amazing organizations like The San Francisco Foundation, Asian Law Caucus, San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network (SFILEN), Gritty City, Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco, PACT, and others.

This year, we continue this commitment and will seek out partnerships with clients advancing racial equity. If you or someone you know has an important story to tell, please reach out.

Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery. Say their names. Tell their stories. Let these stories resound as we stand in solidarity, and encourage change today for a brighter future.

In solidarity,

The Slow Clap Team

Video Content In Quarantine: A Slow Clap Brainstorm

Posted on by Slow Clap

The days are blending together, but we’re still pushing our brains to the limits. As we continue to navigate the public health crisis, our team decided to get together (virtually, of course) to discuss the various forms of marketing videos our partners can produce remotely. Check out our brainstorm session:


Want to make a remote video? Reach out.

Blue Shield of California: Oakland Headquarters

Posted on by Slow Clap

As a company, Slow Clap is always striving to improve the quality of the work we produce for our clients. In November, we worked with our long-time client, Blue Shield of California, to highlight their move from downtown San Francisco to a new, state of the art facility in downtown Oakland. The video was designed to serve as both a general announcement of the move and also a recruitment tool to encourage talent to join the BSC family. It’s now the lead video in their employer brand campaign and was produced with the slickness and high production values worthy of this new office space.

“Any time you undergo a big change in an organization, you run the risk of people leaving. We hired Slow Clap Productions to create a video that would make sure that didn’t happen.” – Mark Hornung, Employer Brand Manager, Blue Shield of California

Approach

BSC wanted to feature their new facilities as a reminder of their cutting-edge workplace, but they also sought to capture the culture of the company, with an emphasis on making a positive impact in the communities that the company serves, as well as making an impact in their new home, Oakland.

Slow Clap kicked off the work on this video by conducting in-depth pre-interviews, a location scout, storyboarding, and a visual shot list to ensure our creative brief was a perfect reflection of the final product.

“The most important aspect of making a great documentary-style corporate video is casting people whose authentic stories and lives align with the key marketing messages of the video. So, pre-interviews to identify the right voices are essential. We took calls with at least twenty employees before settling on the three we featured in the video.” – Daniel Lichtenberg, Creative Director & Founder of Slow Clap

BSC wanted a more polished look for this video than much of the doc-style content we produce for them, so we crewed up with a Director/Producer (Daniel Lichtenberg), Director of Photography (Alan Sanchez), Gaffer (Elani Ferri), Grip & Assistant Camera (Jake Richard &Sarah Wells), Associate Producer (Nicole B Wilson), 2nd Assistant Camera (Naomi Pasmanick), Make-up Artist (Laura Yamasaki), and Production Assistant (Kai Nealis).



Execution

Our team filmed over the course of three days. Like all productions, we had several challenges to work around, but we didn’t let it slow us down. The weather, of course, is always an unpredictable factor. We were unable to fly our drone for the first day of filming due to fog and high winds, but we did manage to capture some powerful interviews from executives and employees, such as CEO & President of BSC, Paul Markovich.


Post-production spanned several weeks. Our editor, Mike Kuba, worked with Daniel and the BSC team to craft a story that brought everything home. The dedication to serving the community, the shared sense of purpose amongst employees, and the great place to work all came front and center.

To put the final touches on this project, Slow Clap collaborated with Bay Area colorist and founder of Color Gatherer, Will Smith (no, not that one). Will and Daniel took a dramatic approach to the look and feel of this film, using the C-Log 3 footage’s high dynamic range to give a larger-than-life feel to the highlights and darks, but crunching the mid-tone contrast to give our characters a sense of authority and purpose.

“Dan and I used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s toolset to create a light and clean environment while tilting the subjects toward a more dramatic feel with more contrast but brighter mid-tones, helping them to stand out from their backgrounds, achieving the larger than life feel, and demanding the viewer’s attention” – Will Smith, Colorist & Founder of Color Gatherer

Results

Blue Shield of California posted the video to YouTube on January 14, 2020. The three social media shorts were shared shortly after that, smartly leveraging a serialized content release strategy that leads to a higher rate of engagement.

“Slow Clap Productions is a creative organization, but they also know they’re a business. Their team is cognizant of achieving a purpose, working closely with us to guarantee results.” – Mark Hornung, Employer Brand Manager, Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California: Oakland

 

Social Shorts

Maria’s Story: Aligning values working with Blue Shield of California

 

Isabella’s Story: Creating a community to serve our communities,

 

Alvin’s Story: Making an impact while helping your friends and family



At the time of writing, the video campaign has several thousand combined views. Considering the limited audience of these recruiting efforts, our client Mark calls this a “slam dunk.”

La Crema Winery’s 40th Anniversary

Posted on by Slow Clap

Over the past few years, Slow Clap has grown a partnership with Jackson Family Wines that began with small, one-off projects for the company’s different wineries, such as Kendall-Jackson, Nielsen, Vérité, and others. In the Summer of 2019, that relationship got serious. JFW asked us to create a marketing video that celebrated the 40th anniversary of La Crema Winery, digging into the history books and origin stories of Pinot Noir in California.

Approach

The JFW marketing team wanted to approach this video from both the historic and educational perspectives but also wanted to ensure the video was entertaining for wine enthusiasts. Dan Sutton, Brand Manager of JFW, knew the exact voices that needed to be featured in this video, such as Rod Burglund, the founder of La Crema, and Jenny Jackson Hartford, Co-Proprietor of JFW. To round out the story, we recommended adding a third-party perspective. We often suggest adding the voice of an industry expert, to create a sense of weight and objectiveness in the story. Dan Berger, a top wine critic, was more than excited to talk about La Crema’s place in history.

 

Execution

Pre-Production

Forty years is a lot to cover in a three-minute video. In addition to a surplus of research, our team conducted pre-interviews with the video’s subjects to pinpoint key moments in La Crema’s history that would speak to the two different target audiences of this video. Using this background research as a guide, we developed a mood board, a shot list, and a creative brief.

Crew + Equipment

Directing and producing was Slow Clap’s Dan Lichtenberg, and logistics were managed by associate producer Nicole B Wilson. Leading the camera department was Alan Sanchez, and working as our assistant camera and grip was Jake Richard and Tomaso Semenzato.

We wanted to create a larger than life feel for this forty-year story, so we decided to use a motion control camera system to add some drama to our interviews. To achieve this, we used the Rhino Arc, which tracked our subject on loop, keeping her or him center frame with a fluid, buttery camera move.

 

During this marathon three day shoot, we filmed in several locations, including La Crema’s production facility and barrel room, the Estate at Saralee’s Vineyard, and La Crema’s Healdsburg tasting room. Each location provided a richness to the history of the winery, as well as a variety of elegant backgrounds for interviews and b-roll.

 

Like all productions, there were challenges, and one of the major challenges we encountered on this production was time. We filmed on-site for three days, spread out over the course of several weeks. But unfortunately, the grapes were not hanging from the vine… so, we had to use several shots from our archive of footage shot with JFW to create some movie magic. Another major snag was the drone footage we needed to capture. The vineyards are in the flight path of the regional airport, so we actually had to get FAA approval to fly in a “no-flight zone.” Thankfully, the results of these efforts were worth it.

We worked with our editor, Natalia Lopatina, to begin editing the video in between filming in order to create the story, select broll, and start figuring out music and tone. Once our crew completed their second day of filming our editor work meticulously alongside our Creative Director, and the La Crema team to complete the video.

“The feedback from the organization was very positive… this video has given us a ‘north star’ on the story for the brand.” – Dan Sutton, Brand Manager, JFW

Results

The video premiered at a general sales meeting event in late July 2019. In early August, Safeway, one of JFW’s biggest retail partners, decided to feature the video in the wine aisles in their California stores.

“The video was really well received at our GSM event. It hit all the marketing and selling points, and recieved lots of applause.” – Dan Sutton, Brand Manager, JFW

Collaboration, flexibility, and trust are the keys to any successful partnership. Over the past few years, we gained the trust of the JFW team and got to know the people behind the brands. We fostered that relationship and were able to really show them the value of working with Slow Clap. As a result, we were able to craft a beautiful story to celebrate 40 years and beyond.

Future Builders

Posted on by Slow Clap

Slow Clap believes that authentic storytelling lies at the heart of all great videos, campaigns, and outreach programs, so when GitHub wanted us to share stories of a few future builders who’ve used GitHub’s platform to transform their community we were excited to produce those projects. These stories took our team around the US and across the pond. It was an amazing learning experience for our team, that pushed us to find a more impactful way to share stories.

Approach

During pre-production, GitHub’s marketing team shared that they wanted to produce a series of 4 mini-documentaries that would follow the launch of the branding video and lead up the Universe conference. They wanted each video to highlight individuals who have used GitHub’s open source platform to create and launch new products or opportunities within different industries and celebrate what developers were doing around the world when they come together. GitHub provided a list of people who they were interested in interviewing and we began the vetting process. We conducted multiple pre-interview phone calls to confirm who was truly interested in being apart of videos, who had a deeply impactful story, who would be available, who would be comfortable speaking on camera, and who would have some very dynamic visuals available for us to capture at the time of production.

After a few weeks of follow up and scheduling,  we narrowed down the list to the final 4 subjects. We confirmed availability and scheduling at each location, what we wanted to capture, and confirmed who would be available as secondary subjects for each video.

Execution

Production Begins on Mini-Documentaries

Once production of the branding video wrapped, our team packed up our gear and headed across the US to Detroit, MI to capture the story of Tifanni Bell, who built her website, The Human Utility, using GitHub. The team spent a total of 3 days with Ms. Bell capturing her, Ms. Helen Griffin, a benefactor of The Human Utility, and the amazing city of Detroit. We utilized a local production assistant to help with loading gear, set up lighting, and maneuvering around the city. Our team conducted the interviews and capture the amazing aerial and street-level broll.

The Human Utility

“Start really small with whatever you can. You just need a couple of people. If you make an impact the whole thing will just, kind of, blow up from there.” Tiffani Ashley Bell, Founder of The Human Utility

Following Detroit, our team flew to Boston to capture Conrad Hollomon, a former US military Office, (Afghanistan veteran) who utilizes GitHub’s platform to help to transition members of the military service community learn software development and code the future. We hired a local production assistant to help us on this 3-day shoot which allowed us to conduct and capture the interviews and capture some of the city’s history in images such as the cobblestone streets and classic architecture.

Operation Code

“I served overseas in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. The things I think about when I’m going through tough times, ‘By going through this have I helped make someone else successful. Have I helped contribute to something larger than myself?” – Conrad Hollomon, Founder of Operation Code

 

 

Once we wrapped in Boston our team flew across the pond to the UK to interview Julius Sweetland, the creator of OptiKey, a free on-screen keyboard that allows the user to communicate and control their computer with their eyes. Julius initially placed his idea on GitHub 3 years ago, and with the help of the open-source community, it has been translated into 19 different languages. Similar to the first 2 videos, we had a 3-day shoot, where we captured interviews and broll of the subject in his natural environment. We hired a production assistant from the UK to help us with getting around and to act as a fixer prior to our arrival.

OptiKey

“I’ve been into computers since I could walk. These magic boxes that I’ve always been in “AW” of, they can do good. I’ve always wanted to have a project that I could go, ‘Hey, this cool thing, I wrote it and look at these people over here that it’s helping.” – Julius Sweetland, Creator of OptiKey

 

 

Our final video took our team back home to the Bay Area. We traveled to Oakland to capture Jamica El, who is part engineer, part storyteller, part curator, and a creator of stories through music and the use of technology. We spent 3-days filming in Oakland with Jamica, capturing her in her home, downtown, a speaking engagement, and all around the city. 

Jamica”Afrodjiak” El

“I’m a maker, and I want to inspire others to make. Being a DJ lead to me being comfortable with creating with my hands. Whether it’s curating, putting together mixes, or scratching records, and soldering wires together. My DJ life made my hardware life less intimidating.”  – Jamica El, Community Storyteller

 

Results

“These mini-documentaries are the logical points of our effects over the last 5 years, as a company.” – Dan Lichtenberg, CEO & Creative Director,  Slow Clap

 

The four documentaries were shared on GitHub’s social media platforms and organically garnered over 250,000 (+) views during the initial marketing launch between September 2018 to October 16, 2018 (the start of Universe 2018).  During that same time, GitHub gained nearly 40,000 new followers and had over 45,000 social engagements across all platforms. In addition to their social media, there was a write up in Forbes about their branding campaign highlighting Black Female Founders, and got a personal shout out from Reddit Founder, Alexis Ohanian, on Twitter regarding the successful marketing campaign for Universe.

Slow Clap Wins BBB 2018 Torch Award for Ethics

Posted on by Jake Richard

In 2018, Slow Clap entered the race for the Better Business Bureau’s Torch Awards for Ethics and won, beating out all of the applicants in the San Francisco Bay Area. The criteria for this award is no joke; the judge’s panel looks at each entry’s commitment to ethically operating a business, as well as its dedication to community leadership.



“Torch Awards winners demonstrate the highest ethical standards of trust toward customers, employees and the communities in which they do business,” said Lori Wilson, President and CEO of BBB serving the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern Coastal California. “We are proud to present this prestigious award to Slow Clap Productions and grateful to them for their part in creating a marketplace where people can trust each other.”



“When I first saw this award I thought that it could be on our roadmap to accomplish. The reason I put it on our road map, was because one of the big reasons I started this company was to do the type of work and work with the type of people I wasn’t able to at the last company I worked at. I want to make an impact with the work that I do and I thought starting my own business could be a vehicle for that.”



-Daniel Lichtenberg, Creative Director


BBB 2018 Torch Awards for Ethics Winner Slow Clap Productions