Oak Grove Academy is a non-denominational Christian preschool in Vancouver, Washington. Founded by Mrs. Jennifer Dodson and Mrs. Bethanie Jeffries, The school serves children ages 2.5 to 8 in an environment where teachers have the ability to know every student personally thanks to their small class sizes and dedication to early education.
But their website was struggling communicate that visually. You could read about their mission, but you couldn't feel it. So they reached out to us to create a video for their site to capture the energy of Oak Grove.
Filming at a preschool sounds simple until you're actually in one. You're coordinating with teachers who are managing classrooms, working around kids who have never seen a camera rig up close, and navigating the very real responsibility of filming children whose families have to give the green light first. On the creative side, the biggest obstacle was the kids' curiosity. The moment a camera enters a room, every kiddo in it wants to stare directly into the lens. Getting natural, candid footage in that environment doesn't happen by accident.
Before we ever got on a call with the Oak Grove team, we went through everything on their site. We wanted to understand who they were before asking them to explain it to us. Then we got on the phone and had them walk us through it: why families choose them, what a regular day looks like, what they're proud of. That conversation built the shot list, which we sent over ahead of time so every teacher knew exactly what we needed before we showed up.
We also took care of model release forms for the kids, which the teachers then distributed to families. For the kiddos whose parents didn't sign off, we made sure a dedicated staff member was with them throughout the shoot. Nobody ended up on camera who shouldn't have been.
On filming day, our team arrived before our scheduled shoot time to walk the space and figure out what needed to be moved or staged before a camera ever entered a classroom.
Then it was go time, and every kiddo in the room immediately locked eyes with the camera. So we leaned into it! We let them ask questions, check it out, get it out of their system, and then turned it into a game. "Don't look at the camera, or you're out!"
They all played along and we were able to capture the shots we were looking for.
