The Background

If you’ve seen our culture video, then you know that the people at Spawn Ideas really love to get outside. And our creative team, in particular, loves to capture our adventures in photo and videos.

One Monday, as we watched the videos we’d created during an outing, we started to wonder what our co-workers had been up to.

And the Spawn Film Fest was born.

We thought giving everyone at Spawn the chance to share their hobbies and participate in a creative event would be fun. So, we teamed up with the Social Committee to organize an event where Spawn staff would share their best videos with the rest of us for fun & prizes.

We put out the word in our weekly staff meeting, and offered people tips for making a great video.

Why We Did It

I think everyone at Spawn has known hobbies, but also hidden hobbies. People want to share what they are passionate about, whether it’s their pup or their love for skiing. Having an avenue to share that was probably daunting at first, but once a few people spoke up and said that they were submitting, a lot of people jumped on board.

We had 16 entries, from people in Account Service, Creative, Media, Planning and Production.

Here’s Bad Apple, the “People’s Choice” winner, by Jesse Alleva.

You can see all the videos here.

What We Learned

“FILM OFTEN, BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU MIGHT NEED THAT FOOTAGE TO CREATE SOMETHING COOL IN THE FUTURE.”

The Film Fest went really smoothly—we had great turnout, and got more submissions than we’d anticipated.  We’re hoping to make this an annual event. In fact, we’re already talking about ways to put a twist on it next time—maybe refining our entry categories or choosing a different season to highlight.

I guess the major insight I personally had was to film often, because you never know when you might need that footage to create something cool in the future.