Tag: Asian Law Caucus

Slow Clap’s 2023 Year in Review: A Year in the Fast Lane

Posted on by Slow Clap
As Slow Clap wraps up its first decade in business (we turned nine this past summer,) we look back and reflect on all the amazing things we’ve learned, and just how much things have changed… and how fast! Take a look at our year condensed into one minute:
 

2023 by the Numbers

Speaking of AI, we had yet another huge project for AI startup Imbue to announce their $200MM fundraising round, and to help with their hypergrowth hiring spree. You can see the Imbue brand story video we made here. It’s a really interesting blend of documentary storytelling and hand-drawn illustrations, animated to bring the CEO’s anecdotes to life.

August 2023


We had another blowout party for Slow Clap’s ninth birthday party in August. This is our favorite night of the year, as we get to celebrate all the big wins that we rarely have time to celebrate as they’re happening (on to the next deadline!) with our team, clients, and collaborators. 

We also welcomed Kiante Marron to the team as a camera and post-production assistant. Kiante’s Gen Z, everything-is-content mindset has been a great refresh to our creaky old Millennial brains!

September 2023


In September, our producer Katy went on maternity leave (more about that next year!), and we welcomed a new producer to the team, Sarah Nathan. Similar to Katy, Sarah brings a documentary and journalist eye to Slow Clap’s body of work, having formerly worked at AJ+, ESPN, as well as Washington State University.

Our team traveled to Orange County to produce this customer story video for a new client,  InterPayments, as well as another virtual event video for our longtime client, Ironclad, in Dallas,TX.

October 2023


In October, we were thrilled to receive the Fast 100 award from the San Francisco Business Times, as one of the 100 fastest growing private companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. And on top of that, we were ranked #23.

We also continued our longtime partnership with the nonprofit Asian Law Caucus, producing three videos for their 2023 gala. We’ve produced these stories for ALC every year since our founding.

November 2023

In November, we produced multiple equity training modules for our partners at The National Equity Project (NEP). We’re happy to continuously support this non-profit and to create content that educates and supports DEIB work in the community. The Slow Clap team had a great 4-day shoot at the NEP office in downtown Oakland and the collaboration was seamless.

On a side note, we got another Slow Clap baby on the way! Our founder, Dan, left for paternity leave in mid-November. Wish him congratulations on his baby girl!

December 2023


Wrapping up this year, we were all hands on deck (or all legos on deck) for our Slow Clap holiday card video. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to live our childhood LEGO® dreams. When it came time to decide on a theme for our annual card, we were inspired by 90’s toy commercials. As it was also our first take on stop-motion animation, we were glad to have Kiante lead the way. Check it out here if you haven’t already.

Looking ahead to 2024, we’re excited to take on new adventures with our amazing team and partners.

Cheers,

The Slow Clap Team

  • 59 video projects completed for our clients, from product launches to client success stories to brand stories and branded content
  • 14 clients, including cause-based non-profits like Asian Law Caucus, startups like Imbue and The Yield, and Fortune 500 companies like eBay and Apple
  • 23rd fastest-growing company in the Bay Area, according to the SF Business Times’ Fast 100 list
  • 10+ different cities filmed including New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, and (of course) San Francisco & Oakland 
  • 100+ videos delivered; from long-form virtual event videos to 15-second social media videos
  • 100% NPS (net promoter score) on Clutch
  • 9 Industry Awards
  • 2 new team members
  • 2 Slow Clap babies
  • 1 virtual production shot on an LED volume

2023 by Month

January 2023


We got 2023 started on a light note, making a series of social media video skits for startup Ironclad. The videos were produced in a DIY style to feel more like organic social content, and featured the lawyer influencer (yes, those exist,) Alex Su making fun of all things business contracts.

February 2023

2023 was year nine of our continuing relationship with healthcare insurance company Blue Shield of California. One highlight was continuing our series of ERG (employee resource group) video profiles. In each mini-documentary, we tell the powerful stories of employees who have gone through their careers facing adversity because of who they are. In February, we filmed interviews for the Black Employee Network, Elevating Women, and the Unidos (Latinx) ERG. All videos have since been released. 

March 2023

In March, the Slow Clap team learned about the fascinating world of low and moderate income housing development and lending as we produced a video about the Golden State Acquisition Fund (aka GSAF). GSAF is an innovative fund created by the State of California and administered by Low Income Investment Fund (aka LIIF) that, to date, has been responsible for more than 10,000 new units of affordable housing.

April 2023


In April 2023, we got a repeat of April 2022. We love when our clients come back for more, and the San Francisco Treasurer did just that when we produced this video about the Kindergarten to College (K2C) program’s success. It gives us a chance to be part of something bigger, something that affects our community. This video features four students in San Francisco schools that have taken advantage of the program to save for college throughout their entire schooling, starting in Kindergarten.

May 2023


Slow Clap produced a fully-virtual production from start to finish for the first time. For those who don’t know, a “virtual production” is a new technique of producing video content that was first developed by Industrial Light and Magic for The Mandalorian. In May, we wrapped and delivered this product launch video for Mindful.

Mindful was releasing an entirely new UI for their product, with design that was accessible and “kind by design.” And to announce it, they reached out to us to build an entire virtual world from scratch. We built the world in Unreal Engine, rigged it on the large volume LED wall with Disguise, and used active camera tracking to bring the whole thing to life. This is a technology that will become standard industry practice in the near future, and the Slow Clap team is so excited to get to be on the bleeding edge of it. Check out a behind-the-scenes video about the making of this.

June 2023


2023 was the year of AI… from ChatGPT to labor strikes to deep fakes to AI Drake songs. 2023 was the year of AI for Slow Clap as well. We adopted some amazing AI tools like Descript for our workflow, and we got to produce video projects for some leading AI companies, like Sana, a leader in the TechEd space. Here, you can see Sana’s CEO talking with the CEO of Nvidia, which is now the sixth-largest company in the world due to its all-in play on AI hardware.

July 2023

Speaking of AI, we had yet another huge project for AI startup Imbue to announce their $200MM fundraising round, and to help with their hypergrowth hiring spree. You can see the Imbue brand story video we made here. It’s a really interesting blend of documentary storytelling and hand-drawn illustrations, animated to bring the CEO’s anecdotes to life.

August 2023


We had another blowout party for Slow Clap’s ninth birthday party in August. This is our favorite night of the year, as we get to celebrate all the big wins that we rarely have time to celebrate as they’re happening (on to the next deadline!) with our team, clients, and collaborators. 

We also welcomed Kiante Marron to the team as a camera and post-production assistant. Kiante’s Gen Z, everything-is-content mindset has been a great refresh to our creaky old Millennial brains!

September 2023


In September, our producer Katy went on maternity leave (more about that next year!), and we welcomed a new producer to the team, Sarah Nathan. Similar to Katy, Sarah brings a documentary and journalist eye to Slow Clap’s body of work, having formerly worked at AJ+, ESPN, as well as Washington State University.

Our team traveled to Orange County to produce this customer story video for a new client,  InterPayments, as well as another virtual event video for our longtime client, Ironclad, in Dallas,TX.

October 2023


In October, we were thrilled to receive the Fast 100 award from the San Francisco Business Times, as one of the 100 fastest growing private companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. And on top of that, we were ranked #23.

We also continued our longtime partnership with the nonprofit Asian Law Caucus, producing three videos for their 2023 gala. We’ve produced these stories for ALC every year since our founding.

November 2023

In November, we produced multiple equity training modules for our partners at The National Equity Project (NEP). We’re happy to continuously support this non-profit and to create content that educates and supports DEIB work in the community. The Slow Clap team had a great 4-day shoot at the NEP office in downtown Oakland and the collaboration was seamless.

On a side note, we got another Slow Clap baby on the way! Our founder, Dan, left for paternity leave in mid-November. Wish him congratulations on his baby girl!

December 2023


Wrapping up this year, we were all hands on deck (or all legos on deck) for our Slow Clap holiday card video. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to live our childhood LEGO® dreams. When it came time to decide on a theme for our annual card, we were inspired by 90’s toy commercials. As it was also our first take on stop-motion animation, we were glad to have Kiante lead the way. Check it out here if you haven’t already.

Looking ahead to 2024, we’re excited to take on new adventures with our amazing team and partners.

Cheers,

The Slow Clap Team

Meet Slow Clap’s Founder & Creative Director: Dan Lichtenberg

Posted on by Slow Clap

Get to know Dan a bit better with our quick Q&A interview.

Introduce yourself!

Hi, I’m Dan, and I’m the founder and creative director of Slow Clap.

What’s your role? What made you gravitate towards this craft?

I wear a lot of hats. Which I think is a theme of my career. I like to consider myself a “generalist” (as opposed to a “specialist”) and I also always tell the team that they too should think of themselves as generalists (albeit, with one or two specialties where they hold deep knowledge).

I suppose my formal roles are Executive Producer and Creative Director. I love overseeing the creative process, and guiding a group of creative folks to create something amazing. But I also love the logistics and budgetary side of things. In our field, these problem-solving tasks are sometimes just as creative as the “creative” side of things!

What’s your prior experience? What made you interested in founding Slow Clap as a company?

My “craft” background is in editing and post-production. Which I think is a good foundational skill set to have in video, in terms of storytelling and understanding what’s possible. But what editing doesn’t teach you is how to effectively communicate and collaborate with a diverse group of stakeholders and partners to bring a vision to life. I guess what led me out of editing and into the world of production was the constant thought in my head of “why didn’t they get this shot?” and “what on earth were they thinking?” And can I tell you, after a decade in production, I feel a lot more humble about it. Nothing ever goes as planned on set, and it’s always easier in hindsight. Which… again… is part of the fun of production! If you can’t handle uncertainty, don’t bother applying.  

Jumping into production was one thing. Founding a company was a whole nother thing. Slow Clap started as a side project with my friend Katy Montgomery. We made a few short films and passion projects. Then I decided to leave my job and try to do Slow Clap as a real business thing.

At my old company, which was also a boutique production company like Slow Clap, we made lots of videos for tech companies, also like Slow Clap. But the work we made tended to be a bit more geared towards lucrative projects. Which, don’t get me wrong, is great, and smart business. But I wanted more out of my job. I wanted to feel like the work I was producing was making an impact, and I wanted the opportunity to tell stories that otherwise might not be told. So with Slow Clap, we’ve made it a priority since day one to always work with nonprofit clients at below-market rates (and, depending on our calendars, often well below market rates). You can see many of the videos we’ve made for Asian Law Caucus, SFILEN, the San Francisco Foundation, Artsy, and more to see some of our cause-based projects.

To me, the amazing part about getting to tell these stories is not just being able to contribute to social justice causes, or telling amazing, creative stories. It’s getting to see my team in action, working on these videos, and being so proud of these projects after we complete them. That is what Slow Clap is all about, coming together around a joint cause. And, yeah, also, making some lucrative tech videos to make sure we stay afloat!

Favorite Film? What am I watching?

I’m not really one for favorites. I tend to think something is good, bad, or really good. 

Recently, I’ve seen examples of all three. Good: Black Bird. Bad: Everything’s Trash. Really Good: Luce. Oh, and actually recently I watched something really bad: You People. Lauren London needs to quit acting. Jonah Hill needs to reassess what the hell he’s doing with his life.

Any Hobbies?

My hobbies for the last eight years have mostly just been my business… Before that, I wrote a lot. I even have a book of poetry published, as well as some poems and short stories in various journals.

These days, I’ve been getting back into tennis, which is great!

But mostly, I just enjoy hanging out with my wife, Rahel, and two dogs, Salty and Peppa.

Lastly, favorite project you’ve worked on?

I’ve been part of pretty much every Slow Clap project for the past eight years, and there’s too many to pick just one.

I will point to a few that I think best summarizes and achieves what I think we do best at Slow Clap, which is to tell authentic stories for brands and causes in a way that entertains and elicits an emotional response.

GitHub Future Builders – Optikey: This was part of a multi-video series about “Future Builders” we produced for GitHub. It documents some of the folks who are “building the future” using GitHub. I think these videos really were the culmination of a lot of hard work we did over the first four years of the company. I like to think of them as “the first time we actually got paid to do what we love to do.” These videos are similar to many of the stories we got to tell for our nonprofit clients, but we got to do it with a healthy budget and nice production values.

Built in Slack: Another great intersection of cause-based work with a client’s agenda at the center of the story. We got to document several nonprofit grassroots movements that were using Slack to make an impact during the pandemic. I love telling these stories about changemakers.

Adobe – Jessica Chou Spotlight: I’ve always loved telling stories about artists. We’ve done this for many years pro bono. But this video is probably the first time we were hired by a brand to tell an artist’s story. Another example of the powerful documentary-style storytelling Slow Clap excels at.

Slow Clap’s 2022 Year in Review: A Bananas Year for Video Content

Posted on by Slow Clap

As the Slow Clap team gets ready for 2023 (wow, we never thought we’d make it but here we are), we took some time to reflect on 2022, the busiest, craziest, most fun year in our company’s eight year history of making videos. Take a look at our year condensed into one minute:

2022 by the Numbers

  • 58 video projects completed for our clients, from virtual event videos to commercials, explainers and educational videos
  • 29 clients, including cause-based non-profits like Public Advocates and Asian Law Caucus, startups like Lattice and Ironclad, and Fortune 500 companies like eBay
  • 10+ different cities filmed including Palm Beach, Dallas, Los Angeles, Riverside, Napa, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and (of course) San Francisco & Oakland 
  • 100+ videos delivered from long-form virtual event videos to 15 second social media videos
  • More than 500 minutes of video content produced
  • 5 million views (and counting)
  • 100% NPS (net promoter score) on Clutch
  • 9 Industry Awards

2022 by Month

January 2022

Our first assignment of the year got us out of the office, and into the water. We partnered with the Port of San Francisco, a longtime client of ours, to produce a video highlighting the fisherpeople of Fisherman’s Wharf, who recently started selling live crabs right off their boat. Tourists and locals alike really enjoyed gaining access to the “working Port,” and getting to talk directly to the folks that catch the crabs. It’s like an open air farmers’ market on the wharf.


February 2022

Our longtime client Ironclad tapped us for yet another virtual event production (the first of three in 2022). Last time we worked with them, we got to film at the Port of Oakland on a tugboat. We figured that was hard to beat. But we beat it in February by filming in a hundreds-year-old redwood forest in Marin. To capture the epic scale, we worked with a massive jib arm, and some heavy duty lighting. Always fun to pull out the big guns.


March 2022

Glide is one of the coolest clients you could think up. Their no-code platform lets anyone turn spreadsheets into mobile apps, whether or not you’ve ever seen a line of code. How cool is that?

We’ve been lucky enough to partner with them to tell their customer success stories for several years. This time around, we got to go big, featuring the PGA, who used Glide to develop apps for the Ryder Cup. We captured interviews at PGA’s Texas and Florida HQs, plus even got to film some product shots and reenactments at our Oakland studio. But most importantly, this customer story video is surprising and entertaining.

Our client at Glide said it best: Their team doesn’t create videos that are off the shelf. They create something that engages the viewer emotionally.


April 2022

We love partnering with our government clients like the San Francisco Treasurer. Telling stories of huge impact, like the Kindergarten to College (K2C) program’s success, gives us a chance to be part of something bigger, something that affects our community. The video we produced does just that, featuring stories of kids and parents who have taken advantage of the K2C program to save for college.


May 2022

After two years spent researching, writing, filming, and editing, in May we completed the new Juror Orientation video for the State of California. Our client had this to say about the collaboration: The team was adaptable, flexible, innovative, creative, and open to new ideas and solutions.

This educational video is seen by nine million jurors a year, and is used as the primary tool to make sure we have an educated jury of our peers. The video has a shelf life of ten to twenty years. At 100+ million views, that’s blockbuster status baby!

We were also excited to simultaneously launch a documentary about the history of Jury Service as a companion piece to the orientation video. We had the amazing challenge of condensing several hundred years of history into ten minutes, and we got to learn how essential juries are to a healthy democracy.


June 2022

Another huge production challenge landed in our laps with Ironclad’s summer virtual event video. Ironclad has always been thinking outside the box for virtual events, but this was on a whole nother level. The theme was 80’s high school in the style of John Hughes films like Breakfast Club and 16 Candles. So we scoured thrift stores and local area high schools to put together an authentic expression of this fun theme. We rented a high school that hasn’t been updated since the 70’s, put together a classic gymnasium school dance scene, rented a 1980’s Porsche, and so much more. Our production design team had a blast with the 80’s period pieces. There’s enough in there to watch this video 10 times before you catch all the easter eggs.


July 2022

We celebrated Slow Clap’s eight year birthday party in a big way at the Alice Collective in downtown Oakland. We’ve celebrated every Slow Clap birthday with a party, inviting our clients, our team, our collaborators, and their loved ones to celebrate another year of amazing video projects, and connect over some banging food and drink. 2022 was no exception.


August 2022

In August, Katy Bailes joined the team as a producer, to help lead our increasingly complex and large body of work. Katy came from the Economist’s documentary films division before joining Slow Clap, and brings her top notch storytelling skills and can-do attitude to all our projects. She’s been a huge asset to the team, and to our clients, in the short time she’s been here.

We also added Keely Liles to the team as a camera and post-production assistant. Keely brings her fresh ideas and fun personality to all of our projects.


September 2022

The Slow Clap team tackled a new challenge in 2022, partnering with San Francisco Bay Area regional retail chain Beck’s Shoes to create a brand story video about their unique approach to retail. Shoe cinematography is unlike any other challenge. These are fashion items that move at ground level. But of course, the most important thing is the look on a customer’s face when they find that perfect fit, which is right up our alley.


October 2022

We always reserve a portion of our calendars to partner with cause-based organizations, offering below market rates. This year, we partnered with Public Advocates, one of the first public interest law firms in America, to produce this short documentary about their 50 year history. We worked with the folks at PA for the entire year to go through decades of archival material and film several new interviews. In the end, we produced a brand film that shows how Public Advocates “makes rights real.”


In addition, after three years of development and pandemic delays, we finished a five-part documentary brand film series for the iconic Napa Valley winery Freemark Abbey. From being founded by a woman in the 1880’s, to winning top prizes at the Judgement of Paris, Freemark Abbey has been redefining what great is since its founding. It was fascinating and exciting to get to be the team to bring this story to life.


November 2022

Another one of our cause-based clients is Asian Law Caucus, who we’ve been partnering with for eight years. In fact, they were our very first client!


This year, we helped them celebrate their 50th anniversary by producing several videos. Our favorite among them was this moving montage featuring several of the best interviews we’ve captured with ALC clients over the years.

December 2022

We’re used to being behind the camera, but in December, the whole team got to try something totally different: we turned the camera around, and starred in the Slow Clap holiday card video. It was a blast, and an opportunity for the team to poke fun at me, in the style of The Office.

To put a cherry on top of the year, we scored some major wins, taking home top awards at: Clutch (Top 1000 B2B Companies), the John Barleycorn Awards (Double Gold and Top Marketer of 2022), the Telly Awards (Gold in Branded Content), the MarCom Awards (Platinum in Corporate Image Video), and the Corporate Content Awards (Best Content in a Live Setting).

We’re looking forward to another great year of partnerships and challenges in 2023.

Dan Lichtenberg
Founder and Creative Director
Slow Clap

Slow Clap Announced as a 2022 Local Excellence Award Winner by UpCity

Posted on by Slow Clap

UpCity spotlights the most trustworthy of over 70,000 B2B service providers. For Slow Clap to win the UpCity Local Excellence Award again in 2022 is really exciting for us. Slow Clap is also a listed and trusted vendor on review sites like Clutch, 50Pros.com, and Design Rush. We love helping our clients tell their authentic stories. 

Here are a couple of things our clients had to say about our partnership in our UpCity reviews:

“Dan and the Slow Clap crew were very professional, conscientious, and worked very hard to deliver a great production under budget and on time. They had to work with some difficult restrictions and they smiled through every adversity. I would highly recommend them.”

Mark Hornung, Employer Brand Consultant

“As someone who has personally worked with Slow Clap during the filming and editing process, they are wonderful to work with. Slow Clap are not just filmmakers, but advocates and storytellers as well. They are invested in helping you tell the best story.”

Casey Tran, Asian Law Caucus

Thanks to all our clients who have chosen us to help tell their stories. It’s your support that has made this award possible and helps us evolve as storytellers. Can’t wait to see you on our next project!

If you or someone you know is interested in making a video, let us know! We’d love to share our knowledge and help you get started. Share your ideas with us here.

Honing the Skills: Jake’s First Edit

Posted on by Jake Richard

I’ve been an assistant editor since almost the beginning of my career at Slow Clap, five years ago. As soon as I expressed an interest in post production (and hammering Dan, our Creative Director, with emails), I was finally given the chance to get into the edit bay. A chance I leapt at as soon as it was offered!

My first full video edit happened pretty recently in the spring of 2019. We produced a rush video for the Asian Law Caucus—a community-based non-profit in San Francisco that fights for the rights of Asian Americans—to celebrate the life of Jeff Adachi, the former San Francisco Public Defender who had just passed away. This was the first editing project that I cut together without a paper edit. So, with just a bit of direction from Dan and a lot of help from Nicole, Slow Clap’s Associate Producer, who acted as my assistant editor and creative collaborator, I jumped in to piece together the story.

At first, I didn’t know much about Jeff Adachi and didn’t think much of it when I was offered the edit. But as I went along and did my research, I learned about who he was and the crazy amount of things he accomplished in his life. It was pretty clear early on that it would be next to impossible to keep the video at the 2 minute mark the client initially wanted, because there was just so much that we could talk about; the amount of corruption he exposed in the San Francisco Police Department, the many people he personally represented in court that were facing serious punishment over false accusation, and the list goes on. The final video rests at about 5 minutes, and it was well worth the added length.

One of the things I struggled with the most was the ending. I couldn’t figure out how to end this video in a way that truly hit home, mainly because I didn’t want to end on one of Jeff’s friends or colleagues talking about him; I wanted to leave our audience with some words directly from him. So, after hours of searching, I finally found the perfect ending: a very powerful soundbite from the man himself, describing what he thought the role a public defender has in the world, which is to serve the under-represented, and not the system that hurts them.

I am really proud of how this video turned out. It is (in my totally unbiased opinion) one of the best videos we have produced for the Asian Law Caucus. Watch it below.

Jake Richard

Junior Editor & Camera Operator