For this assignment we created :30 and :60 second TV spots that told the story of one youth in foster care and illustrated Treehouse’s role in advocating for her education.
Our challenge was to tell a complex and multi-facted story in a very short amount of time. We did this through careful casting and a fast-paced narrative that follows our student across one tumultuous day.
Our creative process involved researching the challenges that youth in foster care face and spending time with a Treehouse Education Specialist. We heard some amazing stories and came away with an incredible appreciation for the resilience and perseverance required of so many youth in foster care. We also learned more about the specifics of day-to-day life in foster care, and we were struck by the close friendships that often develop between Treehouse staff and participating students.
For the story of the spot we drew heavily on the experiences of Treehouse staff and students to give viewers a sense of the world that these students live in. Since we didn’t have time to show every detail of her day, we put a lot of thought into what important moments would tell Jalen’s story and establish her perspective. One example is the garbage bag that Jalen carries with her in the first couple scenes of the spot. From our conversations with employees at Treehouse we learned that youth in foster care will often have to transport their belongings in garbage bags when they change homes. We found this detail particularly heartbreaking and powerful. Our aim was to balance some of the more difficult elements of Jalen’s life with the hope that Treehouse provides for her future, and leave viewers with a sense that they can help change the outcome.
We had a lot of fun throughout the shoot, but our biggest highlight was shooting the classroom scene. All of the extras were real high school students, many of them young actors from the school’s drama program, and a film production class came in to observe our process as well. It was an awesome opportunity to work with young actors and filmmakers, answer some of their questions and show them what a real commercial set looks like.
We had Lisa Cooper (Producer), Peter Edlund (Director) and Scott Gwinn (Post Supervisor, Sound), all from our core Spin team, working together on this project. We also got amazing donated services and gear from other crew members who were equally passionate about promoting this great organization.
We shot on Spin’s C500 with Canon Cinema Prime lenses and edited in Adobe Premiere. Final color correction was done in Davinci Resolve in an editing suite at the Spin offices.
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