Right before Christmas in 2022, one of my agency partners (Creative Visions) got a last-minute call to create a short documentary. One of Wolfspeed’s founders, John Palmour, tragically passed away and his company was organizing a massive celebration of life event in Reynolds Coliseum at NC State in less than a month. They brought me and my commercial production company on to produce the keynote piece of the structured program, a 42-minute mini-doc of eulogies from family, friends, and colleagues of JP.
So, in the span of about 3 weeks, I brought the project from discovery to completion hand-in-hand with our agency partner. We collaborated to help get all 11 subjects into our LED volume studio over 3 days and make that space a safe environment for them to process and share about their memories of JP. I contracted in an Unreal Engine artist and, in the span of days, accelerated the design and construction of a custom 3D space that was “warm and cozy” per the client’s instruction and gave us some visual variety with minimal interruptions on set between subjects. Then, in a week of post production, we gathered, sorted, assembled, edited, revised, edited, and revised 14 hours of media and a pool of hundreds of photos into a polished piece that played for hundreds of people at the event.
I strive to take pride in every project I work on, but this was extra special getting to help honor someone who transformed so many industries, including our own, and someone who is still so well loved by countless people.
