RedEye is pleased to announce the successful presentation of the 2020 National Park Trust Bruce F. Vento Award Event. This is the 13th program RedEye has been a part of, and by far the most unique. When the world went virtual in the spring of 2020, RedEye, stepped up, turned on a dime and played a significant role in the new fully virtual presentation of the Bruce F. Vento Award to Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. Typically this would have been a grand in-person event, with food, and honorees, sponsors and special guests flown in from all over the country, but due to the circumstances brought on by COVID-19 the event moved online and RedEye’s role changed to that of producing the completely virtual program. While this presented many novel challenges, it also opened the door to numerous new opportunities.
In a Normal Year
During a normal year, the Bruce F. Vento Award Event would take place in Washington DC. A reception would be held for that year’s honoree. At the program National Park Trust would present the honoree with the Bruce F. Vento Service Award. RedEye would have presented a 10 minute video about the recipient and the award for the event. Speeches would have been made by guests who had flown in from all over the country. But this was not a normal year.
Challenges with Online Hosting
While RedEye was originally engaged to provide a 10 minute video for the standard in-person program, when the world stopped, and both travel and large in-person activities were paused (for health and safety reasons), National Park Trust and RedEye worked together to reimagine the project. It was clear it had to become virtual, but a zoom meeting was not in the cards for this meaningful award. Nobody wanted the accidental mutings and un-intended awkward sounds to be heard. We certainly did not want to see a presenter have their internet signal freeze or drop out mid speech. Sound and visual quality were of the upmost importance in creating this event. Oh and we still need to create this new end-product on the original budget. Fortunately RedEye is always very cognizant of helping all our clients stay on budget. (And recognizing the extreme circumstances for our long-time client, we were happy to make an in-kind donation of time and services to cover the additional costs.) So the dreaded trifecta of production Good-Fast-Cheap (pick two) now became – can we please have all three. RedEye responded with a resounding YES!
Solutions
The Park Trust Award has now became a full online virtual event. One of the biggest challenges was creating content and gathering all of the footage. RedEye had to develop a strategy, for 11 non-video industry individuals, to record a high quality product on their own and submit these large files using applications they have never used before. RedEye (also operating virtually and spread out over the country) was able to change the production strategy in a matter of weeks and able to provide these full production services while still utilizing safe and healthy practices. Production included, corresponding, scripting, interviewing and walking through, full-production set-ups using only our soothing voice and a virtual meeting. Our talent included people both young and long(er)-in-the-tooth, located in all corners (and time zones) of the country. RedEye then had to receive and edit all of the footage to create a 45 minute online event that conveys the same spectacular feel and style of the in-person reception. To view the final project click here.
Success
The RedEye team worked diligently (and late into the red-eye hours of the night), in the weeks leading up to the program in order to deliver an experience to match both the quality and elegance of the in-person event. Thankfully all that hard work paid off! The final product was magnificent. Everyone enjoyed it as they were able to visually experience first hand, presenters in Georgia, Minnesota, Washington, DC, Hawaii and more. In addition during the presentation of this premiere event, they were able to “live chat” with people from all over the country (including the Senator) as the program premiered. National Park Trust board member Sue Vento said, “Such a great event! Totally engaging & inspiring!…Thank you all for honoring Bruce so beautifully!” NPT Executive Director Grace Lee added, “I wish you could read all of the [kind] emails that we are getting. Many board members sent me email after our event saying that they are so proud to be affiliated with NPT.”
Hard work and return business
While it would be marvelous enough to end the story with the rave reviews, one area RedEye is extremely proud of is their return business. No sooner had we written this press release when Park Trust reached out to us for a follow up event to be created this fall. We are honored.
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