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Insights:Shooting in the heart of South Dakota

September 21, 2017

This summer was a busy one for broadcast production at Insight Marketing Design.
A combination of television commercials and videos for online and presentation purposes kept us on the move.

One of the videos we shot this year was for our client South Dakota Farmers Union. They asked us to create a video (actually two videos) that told their story and let people know how important being or becoming a member is.

The South Dakota Farmers Union was created in 1915 to promote agriculture, family farming and agricultural marketing that form the bedrock of the state of South Dakota’s economy.

We decide we wanted to use real South Dakota Farmers Union members to share this important story.

What made this video shoot special for me was it gave me an opportunity to travel the state and visit the people who live in our rural communities.

The film crew and I spent four days driving to farms and ranches and talking to a wide variety of producers.

We had scripted the video, but once we started talking to the producers and their families we knew that using their own words, which were spoken from the heart, made this video much more of an impact.

As most people around here know, farming and ranching operations have been experiencing difficult times, with low crop prices and challenging new legislation.

To add to these woes, we were filming during a serious drought.

Even though they were facing an extremely difficult time, every producer we visited with graciously welcomed us into their homes and businesses. They stopped working and gave us all they time we needed to film them and their property.

They moved equipment and livestock for us and took the time to show us their land and be sure we understood why the rural lifestyle was so important to them and all of us.

Like any shoot, there where unexpected challenges. One of the stranger ones was we actually had to deal with rain during a drought. The rain beating on top of the metal roofs made recording sound impossible.

To make sure we got what we needed, one rancher let us move location from his impressive new barn to an old barn he was planning to tear down.

The wooden roof on the old barn was much more quiet in the rain than the metal one. Even though he kept saying how embarrassing it was for people to see his rundown barn, he believed in what we were doing enough to suffer through.

We also faced windy days, which is not that unusual on the plains, but kept our drone camera grounded for a couple days.

Once again though, the farmers and ranchers provided us alternate filming opportunities, like riding us around on their ATVs and tractors for some cool steady cam video.

I wish everyone reading this blog could meet these great people in person but since they are all obviously very busy I’ll invite you to click here to see their video performances and learn about the great work the South Dakota Farmers Union does for the Ag industry and our entire state.

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