A Creative Legacy: Katie Kennedy, AAF Madison Silver Medal Award Video
September 24, 2024
Introduction
This year we marked our eighth time sponsoring the Silver Medal Award for AAF Madison. The primary way we sponsor the award is by creating a short video vignette of the winner featuring soundbites from friends, colleagues, and family, some storytelling from the winner, and some fun b-roll that adds to the story and helps to highlight our subject’s personality. This year we were excited to welcome Katie Kennedy as this year’s winner.
Learning the Trade as a Team
Katie Kennedy was another stellar addition to the Silver Medal Award winners this year. As we interviewed her, we quickly found out why. She played a significant role in key events, particularly in the coverage of high-profile races like the TCS New York City Marathon, highlighting her active participation in the track and field community. Her experiences have profoundly shaped her personal and professional life. She has always been willing to put in the hard work, from training with the Waunakee football team in her high school years to rebuilding the Daily Cardinal as an undergrad at UW after it had closed its doors, from co-founding Ad2 to starting her own business and later stepping into ownership with her brother Chris at the company founded by their father, KennedyC. Oh, and somewhere in there, after Washington DC, New York City, and Silicon Valley… she returned to Madison, started a family, and had three daughters.
The Triumphant Return
It was clear from Katie Kennedy’s story that Madison is important to her, and we definitely wanted to emphasize that. Her contributions to the Madison community are profound, and we were surprised to find out that she led some of the Madison events and organizations we take for granted. Her leadership has had a significant impact on the country, influencing broader cultural and social movements. If not for her leadership, The Daily Cardinal, Freakfest, and Ad2 Madison (to name a few) may not exist as we know them today.
Adding Style to Story
One of the ways we worked to insert some personality into her video was to start with inspiration from some of her favorite directors, Wes Anderson and John Hughes. Wes Anderson gave us a strong visual style to begin working with. The iconic center framing and colorful backgrounds were perfect for creating a unique and inviting space for the interviews. We also drew heavily on the intro sequence from The Royal Tenebaums for the intro of her piece. It was the perfect way to strike an artistic, slightly quirky tone and a fun way to introduce our interviewees.
Another artistic choice was how we handled the photos, awards, and newspaper clippings she shared with us. Although Ken Burns created a recognizable and acceptable style for documentary filmmaking, we find that the slow zoom of digital images gets a little old. Wes Anderson does use digital images some in his work, preferring a tiled look instead of the single photo zoom. But another method I noticed in some of his work was to film the physical photos either on a surface or hung on a wall, sometimes including a bit of fun action from an actor or just some hands. We used a ton of this in our film to show all of the elements that Katie shared with us – even printing out digital photos that had been shared in some instances and putting them into frames. This method is perhaps more readily associated with Jared Hess’s style in films like Napolean Dynamite, Nacho Libre, and Gentlemen Broncos… but he may well have been inspired first from Wes Anderson so we still felt like it fit.
The John Hughes influence was perhaps a bit more subtle but we felt that it would work itself in through some of the 80’s references and then of course we had to wrap things up with the classic Ferris Bueler ending gag. The seasonal references added to the overall aesthetic of the video, enhancing the themes of renewal and anticipation.
To create all of these backgrounds in a tight timeline, we decided to shoot on green screen, and then Max went to work generating backgrounds with the help of some AI tools. But the deep dive on that is probably best suited for another blog post.
Why We Love the Silver Medal
The most rewarding part of working on the Silver Medal video project is getting to know leaders in the advertising business in Madison and learning about some of the agencies they’ve worked with or built and the marketing campaigns they’ve led, connecting to the broader world of advertising. The impactful words shared by these leaders offer deep insights into the industry and its evolution. An additional bonus is that the subjects we’ve filmed have always been willing to lean in to a fun creative direction and give us enough leeway to make something awesome. We can only generate the best creative short films when the client is willing to step outside of “plain and safe” and go for it with us!
