Gun Safety President: PSA

“We filmed President Biden, Vice President Harris and others to create one of the most successful digital gun safety ads ever.”

PRODUCTION | U.S. Government Office

Gun Safety President: A Case Study

BRIEF

The digital team at Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, one of the nation’s leading gun safety advocacy organizations, came to us with an enormous challenge – how can we work within the schedules of some of the nation’s busiest people while also creating a video series that spoke with one unified voice? Never before had this many candidates been willing to speak together with such force on the issue of gun violence – we knew that this was a historic moment.

APPROACH

Together, we produced a digital series featuring major candidates for the Democratic Presidential Nomination speaking with one voice on the issue of gun safety. We employed a direct-to-camera aesthetic, emphasizing a personal connection with the audience, while also crafting targeted questions that would allow us to edit unscripted responses together for multiple videos. Most importantly, we developed a mobile studio set-up which we traveled across the country – from hotel ballrooms to the candidates’ homes – to help establish the sense of one uniform message.

We came away from this project with great memories - from President Biden offering us a drink at his home, to Senator Bernie Sanders laughing at our jokes and Vice President Kamala Harris telling us that our production was more professional than CNN. But we were most proud to create a video package that truly moved the needle on this issue and continues to be considered a model campaign for the gun safety movement.

This series was the most successful in the history of the organization, reaching 8 million organic views and 10 million paid views.

In addition to being featured on CNN, NPR and MSNBC, these viral videos garnered the attention of major public figures including Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Kimmel – expanding its reach to an even wider audience. +

CREDITS +

Production:

Director: Jon Bougher
Creative Director: Kohl Threlkeld
Producer: Jonathan Kim
DP: Adam Chapman
Camera Assistant: Mauricio Ventura
Gaffer: Aiden Korotkin
Sound: Sean Peoples
Production Assistant: Mitra Arthur

Post-production:

Supervisor: Jon Bougher
Editor: Matt Tanski