Opportunities don’t get more golden than this.
One time when we were editing, Andre Iguodala popped into the room, did bunny ears on me, and left. Wait…let me back up.
As a lifelong fan of the Golden State Warriors, I was just a teensy bit excited to collaborate directly with the team for their tv spots for the 2015-2016 season, coming off their first championship in my lifetime. Working with the team meant spending time at their HQ in downtown Oakland, which meant the practice courts were off the same hallway (hence the Iggy encounter). These spots used a mix of existing footage and location shots around the Bay Area, and as for capturing the "fan voice" in the scripts, I leaned into 34 years of personal research.
If you’ve made it this far, you get world premier. As a treat.
I got a text in late June 2016 from one of my contacts at the team. They asked if I had time over the weekend to work on an “internal recruitment video.” Knowing this was around the time of free agency, I asked if it was for a player. They said yes. Knowing some of the wild rumors that were floating around, I asked if it was for Kevin Durant. They made me promise not to tell anyone. Then they said yes.
So where the spots you see above were for broadcast, the video below was written for an audience of, really, one very tall slim hooper in particular. It’s the pitch video we cranked out for “the KD meeting” in the Hamptons. The script had a handful of very specific messaging beats it had to hit, and it’s certainly not the most nuanced work, but it was definitely a unique assignment in my career.