Summer basketball camp
A camp isn't sold with a schedule. It's sold by letting a parent see who will look after their kid, and what that kid's face looks like coming home.
A day at summer camp
The brief
Seven videos for the camp's social channels: the children, the coaches, an ordinary day, plus an interview with the head coach. The brief was "do it in your style, we trust you."
What was at stake
A camp fills up in spring, and only if a parent believes their child will be safe and will enjoy it. Neither of those can be written into a paragraph. Both show up on a face. A photo of a gym says nothing.
The constraint
A free hand is harder than a tight brief: the goal is yours to define, and nobody tells you that you defined it wrong until it's finished. On top of that you're filming children, where attention, energy and willingness to be on camera change by the minute, and where a second take means it's no longer spontaneous.
How it was shot and cut
We set the goal ourselves and wrote it down in one sentence: every video answers one question a parent asks before paying. The seven episodes split along that line.
One video, one question a parent has
What a normal day looks like. Who the coaches are. What the kid takes home. Seven videos that don't overlap add up to an answer; seven videos "from the camp" add up to the same thing seven times.
The interview anchors the series
A face and a voice do for trust what a schedule never will. That's why the interview runs longer than the rest and sits in the middle of the series instead of at the end.
Children playing, never posed
Standing a child in frame and asking them to look natural is the fastest way to get an unnatural shot. The camera followed the game instead of the other way round.
More from this project
Frames from the film
Click any frame to open it full screen.
The camp has seven episodes that together answer what parents actually ask, plus a coach interview it can open the whole conversation with.
CreditsConcept, camera and edit: Kirill · Interview: the camp's head coach