Lehigh Valley Humane Society Documentary Project

How We Began Working Together

Jackie Folsom, Director of Development at the Lehigh Valley Humane Society, reached out to us in late Q3 of 2021 to create a documentary for broadcast on PBS39. LVHS was going through an amazing renovation to almost triple their kennel capacity and sizes, include a complete veterinary clinic, and truly highlight that this is no longer the Humane Society from five, ten years ago.

We would film the video content, produce the documentary alongside the Humane Society, and deliver a final piece to the station.

Steps to Create the Documentary

The first event we filmed was the ground breaking event in October 2021. We also put together an announcement video for the Lehigh Valley Humane Society to promote their construction, mid-construction.

We would spend the next year filming Alvin H. Butz build the new kennels, renovate the building, and film interviews. Who we would interview continued to be altered, but eventually we settled on all LVHS employees and volunteers.

We edited the documentary, referring the a guidebook PBS has available for outside productions, and sent it in to the necessary people for review as we continued to make changes. We had the documentary completed an entire month before our deadline. But that is not the whole story, nor finish what occurred in with this massive project.

Deadline and Release Pushbacks

Our original deadline was in August 2022, which we initially met. However, LVHS instructed us a new launch date had been decided. We would launch and announce the documentary during a "Community Day" celebration. This gave us time to add extra motion graphics and spice the piece up more. We asked if we could refine the edit a bit more, and were approved.

Before Community Day, we were then informed our distribution had fallen through. Remember: Tyler Wursta Video was not in charge of distribution, we only were brought on the create the content. Our new deadline was December 2022 and we recommended forming a campaign to drive traffic to the documentary. LVHS agreed and we began putting together advertisements with a limited budget from the content we already filmed.

As our December deadline approached, we met with the staff at LVHS to discuss the campaign. We were then informed that the documentary would be launched in March 2023 and that LVHS would handle the marketing and advertising. We gave our advice and delivered the content to the team at the Lehigh Valley Humane Society.

Example of the added motion graphics we were able to create during the first deadline shift.

The Result

We really have no idea the results driven from the last minute campaign or the documentary project. What we do know is we have heard from others at LVHS, have submitted the pieces to several award shows, and have heard amazing feedback everywhere!

The Video Project

Truly a great non-profit organization to work with, we enjoyed the team at the Lehigh Valley Humane Society and their energy. From October 2021 to January 2023, they were a fun team to work with, a professional team, and have a good mission they strive to accomplish. We remember the Humane Society from ten years ago and we would have never brought a sick animal there then. Now however, we would entrust the animal welfare to the clear experts and people who truly care deeply about the lives of these animals. To be a part of the process to spread the awareness of how much has truly changed, we are humbled and are highly appreciate the opportunity we were given by LVHS.

In total we produced sixteen videos for LVHS to use. Two documentaries, one trailer, three internal memos/elevator pitch videos for fundraising and sharing, seven advertisements, and three announcement videos during mid-construction efforts.

We were producing an entirely different documentary project for another non-profit at the same time as this one, however, we do not have the legal rights ourselves to share it. When you need non-profit video content, give Tyler Wursta Video a call!