Cleveland Cavaliers Championship Celebration Video
Client: Cleveland Cavaliers / Industry: Sports / Completed: November 2016 / Location: Cleveland, OH
Objective/Requirements
Objectives
- Give fans a behind the scenes look at how the team’s championship celebration came together
- Document a historic night in the city of Cleveland
- Create a showcase piece that will last as a time capsule of a night many Cleveland sports fans will never forget
- Share the evening with Cavaliers fans around the world, who weren’t able to be a part of the sold out event in-person
Requirements
- Concept creation
- One-day video shoot
- Creation of an apx. 8:00 high-quality, documentary style video that would be distributed online
Discovery/Concepting
The Cleveland Cavaliers turned to us for a very important project that would capture and tell the story of a night that Cleveland sports fans had been waiting 52 years for, the night Cleveland raised a championship banner. They wanted to create a behind-the-scenes, documentary style video that would showcase the night and all of the planning that went into making it all come to life.
The Cavaliers won the 2016 NBA Championship in June, and would be celebrating that accomplishment on Opening Night of the 2016-17 NBA season at Quicken Loans Arena. This meant that, in addition to the usual pageantry of an Opening Night, the preparation and focus on this game would be at a level that most people had never experienced before.
Leading up to the game, we worked hand-in-hand with the Cavaliers team to learn about all of the events that would be going on surrounding the night, the timeline of the entire day, who some key people would be to talk to about how everything was coming together, and also where we should be throughout the day and night to capture the shots that we needed to tell this special story.
Video Shoot
On the day of the shoot, we headed to Cleveland, with a five-person crew, who would be capturing the build-up and the excitement from morning to night.
Our team arrived at Quicken Loans Arena at 8:00 AM, got the gear set up, and headed off to meet with the necessary people. The first step was a rundown meeting with QTV, who gave our team one last rundown of the day’s events.
From there, the team broke off into two groups, each with a specific list of shots that they were looking to capture so that they could be in different places at the same time. With the massive amount of events and activities going on, all in different locations, having multiple cameras was necessary to cover it all.
Throughout the day, we captured everything from interviews with staff members and fans, rehearsals, pregame excitement, the championship ceremony, including the ring ceremony and banner raising, and also highlights from the game to tell the story of this magical night in Cleveland sports.
Video Creation
In the days following, we went through the hours of footage that we captured and began editing together a piece that would give fans a behind the scenes look at this special event that they would otherwise never have seen.
Our editing team sorted and organized all of the clips and carefully edited the piece together to recap this action-packed day in only about nine minutes. We continued to work closely with the Cavaliers to make tweaks to the piece until it was in a perfect place, and told the story of this incredible evening.
Results
It was an honor to be involved, and to be trusted to tell this very special story. It’s a project that will always be one of our favorites, and one that stands out as one of the coolest pieces that we’ve ever had the opportunity to create.
The video was posted and shared online and seen by many. In February 2017, the video was bestowed the honor of winning two different Silver ADDY Awards from the American Advertising Federation, in the categories of Branded Content and Cinematography. These awards were a great honor for both our team and the Cavaliers, showing how impactful the piece and the story truly were.
