This past June, Motion Source was approached by The Andrew Weishar Foundation to make a video for their upcoming fundraiser, WeishFest. The foundation was created in honor of Andrew Weishar, an incredible student, athlete, and young man, who lost his battle to cancer in 2012 at the age of 21. True to his reputation for being, “one of the nicest kids” anyone has ever known, before he passed, Andrew expressed his wishes to his younger brother and his family to create a way to give back the love that their family received in their time of need. Thus, The Andrew Weishar Foundation was born in early 2013, and was created to give financial and emotional support to families with children or young adults who have cancer. The money the foundation is able to provide for these families, found through social workers at various hospitals in Chicagoland, can be used towards medical treatments, every day necessities like groceries, or even a chance to relax on a vacation together as a family. Motion Source was more than happy to create a video for this wonderful organization.

Check out the video below!

When Foundation President Dan Weishar, Andrew’s brother,  first sent us an email, we discussed what he was looking for in his video, and provided him with 5 different concepts of what could work best for his vision. Together, we agreed on a combination of ideas. First and foremost, we would have Dan and his family, along with families that have been aided by the foundation, with hand-written signs, stating their feelings about the foundation. This would be interspersed with short interviews, and video of pictures of the Weishar family and some of Andrew’s football mementos. Dan contacted the people he wanted to talk about his foundation, while we worked on getting the main posters for the concept together. Although the families would create the majority of the posters themselves, we wanted the ones stating the name and contact information of the foundation, along with their beautiful logo, to be just right. We Motion Source’s storyboard artist draw them up for us, which led to a very clean, but still personal, look.

We were able to shoot the video in two night-shoots, in order to work around the schedules of the families involved, in front of our white cyc wall at our Brookfield studio. Dan was very involved in the process of the interviews, as well as picking what photos and football gear would make it in the video. And, the others involved in the video got to add their own touch by deciding what to write on their posters, to finish the sentence, “The Andrew Weishar Foundation…” Some examples included, “...is amazing,” “...gives me hope,” and “...makes me smile!”

This was a very special shoot for us, and it was a pleasure to work with Dan, his foundation and the wonderful families he has helped. We hope this video will help them to inspire others to “pay it forward.” If you believe a video like this could help your organization, click here and we will contact you to get started!