5 key messages

We met to try to choose some of our key points and here's what we came up with. Hopefully they're pretty straightforward. If you need any more explanation on any of these let me know...Thanks!

1. College-bound: The K to College Model prepares kids to get into college, be successful at college, and graduate from college.
2. Long-term Commitment: The K to College Model is unique in that it can support a kid throughout their entire academic career (elementary, middle, high school and college)
3. Intense/individualized: The K to College Model is unique in that kids are individually assessed, receive one-to-one support, work with qualified staff, significantly increase their time in structured academic time, and are served year-round.
4. Academics + Character and Leadership: Though our core focus is academics we also integrate character and leadership development into all of our programs to develop life skills and long-term success.
   
5. Break the cycle of poverty: When we succeed at our mission then we have a student who succeeds. That changes the future for their family and ultimately their community as a whole. That's our long-term goal.

Messaging...

Just to keep everyone updated...a few of the staff and Board are going to meet Oct 7th to narrow down our main goals of the video/central messages/etc. As soon as we've done that we'll be able to give you a better sense of the direction to go with content...that'll probably would be a good time to set up a conference call.

The Video

Hey there - Thank you James for setting this up. Am very excited to help on this video. So to get underway, there are some quick questions to help shape which direction we want to go that everyone should start considering.

1.) For what purpose is the video? Is it promotional? Is it just an honorary piece? Basically what are you trying to get out of it? Who is the audience?

2.) Length... For any web based video it becomes dangerous territory to go longer than 5 minutes. If you are looking for a piece to be used at (lets say) a benefit dinner or something of that nature, you can go longer, but again for web I would think more in terms of 3-4 minutes is ideal and what you would want to achieve.

So my general take on all this up to this point would be to make a talking head documentary short piece (again in the 3-5 min range). With that, we capture interviews with the key faculty, contributors, and even kids going through the program and ideally a success story or two. (Sorry if this is redundant to ideas you have already thrown out). From there we capture the activity of the Emily K Center. Showing kids in the day to day, throw in some nice film making moves and you will have a solid slate of footage to work around and cut into a really tight, uplifting piece. So let me know if I am going in the right direction here and definitely start thinking about those first two questions. Look forward to it!

Thanks!
Phil

For those that haven't been here yet...

First of all...thanks for setting this up James. We are going to have some more formal discussions as a staff about the key messages/goals of the video...but did want to get folks that are new to the Center directed to some good places to start to learn about us:

• Last year's Annual Report - Some is a little out-of-date but it's a good first overview. p1 and p 10-11 are probably the most relevant.
• 2008-09 Video - this isn't a formal video..it was just a compilation of clips we ran in the background during one our Pioneer Scholars recognition ceremony a year ago. It does give you a good sense of some of the spaces/angles/kinds of shots and is probably especially useful for those who haven't been in the building before.
  
• The blog has a lot of great stuff for getting a better "feel" for us. A few in particular you might want to check out...Coach K talking about his mom (we have some more raw footage that isn't up anywhere yet where he talks more in general about the Center). A good little "Day in the Life" piece about one of our Pioneer Scholars kids. A little more about our volunteers. Some of our kids talking about their New Year's goals.

Like I said, much more to come, but thought you might like to start getting a look and feel for who we are!

Getting Started

Hello all,
This will be a place that we can post ideas, questions, concerns etc for the shoot that we have tentatively scheduled for tuesday. wednesday Nov 2,3rd.
I thought that Lauren and Treat might post some of their goals for what the video will capture and what it will do for the center, here - then Phil, Josh and James can absorb and make comments.  Any pictures, quotes, people being interviewed, bios, etc will be very helpful from the EKC team.  Let's just make this blog a creative place - anything that might lend to the mood of the video, or express ideas about what should be in the video, or thoughts about narrative and story in the video will be very helpful.  My goal is to have a good groundwork for preproduction start here and then move forward toward a more detailed plan.
This blog will be a great place for all to ask questions of each other, story wise, logistics wise, etc and have the questions commented on for all to see.
JD

EKC Contact Info

Lauren Gardner,

Treat Harvey
Emily Krzyzewski Center

LGardner@emilyk.org

Tharvey@emilyk.org

Office: 919-680-0308

Website: www.emilyk.org
Blog: www.emilykblog.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/EmilyKCenter
Twitter: http://twitter.com/EmilyKCenter