As soon as you hit play on the Ascension community video for Abrazo Homes, you know there’s something special about it.

Abrazo Homes won the 2021 Market Proof Award for Best Community Video and the award for Best Video Campaign for the project. Shane Austin, Chief Storyteller, was behind the award-winning video and campaign. He sat down to tell us about what went into creating them.

Shane is no stranger to creating impressive videos for the company. In his role, he focuses primarily on video content but deals with all forms of content for the website, social media, and other marketing avenues. But the Ascension community was unique for Abrazo. It would be a new product in a different price point and location than their other offerings. When tasked with creating the Ascension video, he wanted to pull customers in emotionally, make them feel like a part of the Abrazo family, and give the video a “premium” feel to reach this new demographic.

Also, Ascension was the first community they had fully developed on their own. From the beginning, Abrazo’s goal was to get people on the VIP list for the coming soon community. This allowed Shane to create teaser videos early in the process, starting at dirt and continuing at frame stage. Once they had built a large VIP list, they revealed the full, now award-winning video, to the VIP list first and then to the public.

In the early stages of the process, Shane was inspired by the Ford Bronco campaign. Ford used teasers to build curiosity and hype, followed by a worldwide reveal of an in-depth video that led to pre-orders of the vehicle. Excited about Shane’s Ford Bronco inspiration, the Abrazo team gave Shane the freedom to run with his vision.

For the full video, Shane used storyboarding and prepared for the sit-down on-camera interviews with the two owners of Abrazo Homes and an employee who was heavily involved in the designs. He wanted the video to show the creation story from the owners themselves and give viewers a sense of the pulse for this new community.

But it wasn’t necessarily a fast process. Shane filmed some of the early stages of the community two years ago. However, most of the work took place over the past six months with a single day of filming interviews and two days of getting drone shots and shots of the finished house.

Another week or two was spent editing, which he used to make the finished product shine. Shane is a believer that music plays a big role in grabbing viewers emotionally. Even before Shane recorded the interviews, he'd chosen the song and had an idea of the shots he wanted. Through editing, he also used slower movements, pulling in subtly, to match the music and to draw viewers into the story.

According to Shane, getting started in video or improving video content doesn't have to be expensive. Starting with a good camera and lens, a nice light, and possibly a gimbal can get you a great finished product. The nicest equipment doesn’t always lead to the best video. It’s more important to understand how to use the equipment, lighting, and movements to help viewers connect to the video.

Overall, the Ascension video was one of Abrazo’s best performing videos of the year and the entire campaign was viewed as a big success. Shane looks forward to continuing to make more videos like the Ascension video in the future, and we can’t wait to see what Shane and the team come up with next!

Explore all the winners of the 2021 Market Proof Award at https://www.marketproofawards.com/2021-winners/.