Vanguard of the Revolution

Overview

For this documentary we had to answer to several key constituencies: the filmmakers, PBS and its viewers, the “idea” of the Black Panthers as cultural icons, and the living Panthers, who have a vested interest both in their movement’s portrayals and in how their own personal stories are told. Beginning with a culture of respect we attempted to echo how the organization described and marketed its own story, while allowing for our own original visual ideas and concepts. Over the course of 5+ exciting months, we learned whatever we needed to in order to fulfill the client’s needs, from video editing to Ruby on Rails. Our campaign took off right before the PBS debut and we reached nearly a million and a half people through Twitter that day; within the first broadcast we reached 1.8 million viewers, making this the highest-rated Independent Lens documentary of all time.