CHALLENGE: Create winter olympics content during the spring, summer and early fall, without the ability to go offshore, while collaborating with two other agencies and competing for time with the talent.

As my team was sharing contracted talent time with the TV production team, we had to negotiate an arrangement that allowed both TV and digital content to fulfill our duties to the client. The TV concept was to be produced in a studio, so weather did not matter. The digital documentaries I was spearheading, however, were weather dependent.

We explored many options, including shooting in Chile or Argentina, where snow was plentiful, but the client ultimately instructed us to keep production within the US.

SOLUTION: We created an animated winter olympics sponsorship manifesto to lead the campaign and followed up with a crafty series of documentaries blending a multi-season shoot and stock footage to convey the spirit of the winter games.

We negotiated with the TV production team to split our time with the athletes and film portions of our project during the summer and then closed out filming in October in Park City, UT, which allowed us to show a range of seasons in our final stories. Armed with the knowledge that we would not be able to show true winter, we developed an intimate shooting style, working as much as possible with long lenses and shallow focus, then sourced stock footage of mountains, snow, and wintery elements to support the winter messaging.