The Second Block

The communication problem

StarTribe puts on a night in Pack Square Park in downtown Asheville, and it needed two different things a month apart. Before the night, short vertical pieces that looked like its own material rather than a template, built from footage it already had. After the night, a record of it: a film for the website, reels for the feed and stills for the newsletter, all from one evening that only happens once.

The design approach

Take the smaller job first and do it properly. In September a five hour Creative Hourly block went into three promo reels cut from the client’s own archive, with the house style measured from ads the client had already approved rather than guessed at. That work is what bought the second block. For the event, the shoot was planned around the light, golden hour, sunset and night, with every act covered wide, on the hands, on the face and in the crowd. The edit then treated the footage as data: every clip logged, every act confirmed before a name went on screen, and every still chosen by measuring focus rather than by eye.

The work

Three promo reels in September. Then a highlight film, four vertical reels, a set of newsletter stills, and a same day round of the client’s own notes on the film, from a fifteen hour block.

• September: three thirty second vertical reels from a five hour prepaid block, delivered two days after payment.
• September: the client’s archive audited first, four shoots going back to 2021 and 808 files, including a 2021 shoot recovered from three unlisted uploads.
• October: a fifteen hour block, paid in full before the shoot. Five of those hours were spent on site with two cameras.
• Two hundred and ninety nine clips ingested with checksums, then logged and culled in one pass.
• Phone footage shot in HDR was converted to standard colour so the two cameras cut together without a jump.
• Every act was matched to its own footage and confirmed against the published lineup before a name went on screen. A name only ever sits over that performer.
• Focus was measured, not eyeballed. An edge width scan of 16,663 frames chose every still and every held shot. The method came from a miss: the first stills set used a contrast measure, our own review caught half of it soft, and it was rebuilt and checked again by three separate reviews. That rework was not billed.
• A highlight film of one minute twenty five, cut to the measured beat of the track.
• Four vertical reels with no clip shared between them, so each one stands as its own piece.
• The fourth reel is built on the client’s own vision book. Its printed pages were turned into motion from a single phone photo he sent, with his own lines set as the cards.
• The client sent his notes on the film as a seven minute screen recording. It was transcribed, each note matched to the exact moment in the film, and every note applied the same day.
• Every cut went through two separate reviews before Will saw it, and Will’s own notes went in before the client saw anything.