“Why don’t we have our cinematographer fly his drone around town, with short stops at each of the kollel locations?”
Rabbi Benzion Zuckerman, newly appointed executive director of Reshes Hakollelim, reached out in mid-August. Reshes Hakollelim started 18 years ago as a one-man undertaking when it’s founder Rabbi Yechiel Berman noticed that the kollel around the corner from his Monmouth Avenue home in Lakewood was struggling with fundraising. He agreed to take temporary responsibility, on a month-by-month basis, but of course it ended up turning into a long-term commitment — and growing to multiple kollelim. Reshes Hakollelim is now a fast-growing organization that provides funding to 21 kollelim in the Lakewood area, and Rabbi Zuckerman is trying to take fundraising to the next level.
“I think creating a professional video for us to play at parlor meetings would be a good place to begin,” he explained.
The number of kollelim, and the accompanying budget, is staggering. The kollelim are also spread out across town, running at different hours: several are full-day programs, others operate at night, and some only on Shabbos. Our challenge was to present Reshes Hakollelim visually as a unified network so our three- to five-minute video didn’t simply feel like fragmented footage of dozens of separate programs.
Senior production manager Moshe Niehaus had a brainstorm.
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