01
You were asked to line up speakers at short notice, without being told what the videos were actually for.
CONFERENCE VIDEO FOR MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATIONS
Most of what you filmed at your last conference has never been used.
That is almost never a production problem. It is that nobody agreed what the footage was for before the cameras arrived. I am in my eleventh year fixing exactly that, inside one association.
Book a 15-minute call
No pitch. Fifteen minutes on what your last conference produced, and what happened to it afterwards.
11th year
Video producer of record for NAFSA, the worldwide leader in international education
300+
Segments delivered: plenaries, talk shows, testimonials, same-day cuts
3 Telly Awards
Plus two W3 Golds, for the branded short film "Always"
IF ANY OF THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR
The problem is upstream of the camera.
If two of these land, the problem was never your supplier. It is content that got commissioned without a destination.
02
The footage came back. Some of it published. The rest went quiet, and nobody chased it.
03
A year later, nobody can tell you how many people watched any of it through to the end.
WHO YOU WOULD BE TALKING TO
Getting something usable out of a nervous board member is a directing problem, not a camera problem.
I trained as a classical actor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, then spent 18 years acting, writing, directing in NYC before I turned the camera around.
That is the reason this works. Conference interviews happen with people who did not plan to be on camera that day: a board member between sessions, a sponsor with three minutes, a member pulled out of a hallway. Most of them are quietly dreading it.
I have directed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Terry Gross, Abigail Disney, Isabel Wilkerson and José Andrés. I have also done it with several hundred members who had never been in front of a lens and did not want to be. The second group is the harder job, and it is the one your conference actually depends upon.
The calm on the day is not a personality trait. It is a directing method, and it is why the footage is usable a year later.
WHAT PARTNERS SAY
On the record.
"Darrin's expertise in directing non-actors for a PSA video helped our event attendees feel comfortable and confident on-camera."
"The end result was an exceptional and powerful 3 minutes that more than captured everything we were looking for."
What did your last conference
leave you with?
If the honest answer is a folder nobody has opened, that is worth fifteen minutes. I will tell you what I would have done differently, whether or not we work together.
Or call 781-749-0225 · Boston, MA