About 3 weeks ago, I got an email saying that the video we created for my 30th birthday, “The Celebrate EDU Story”, was a finalist at the Reel Impact Film Festival. Truthfully, I thought we didn’t submit for any festival, this email must be spam. But once I started looking into it, I realized it was definitely NOT spam but a really cool event. It so happened that the team at One World saw our video online and added it to the list of 300 submissions for the festival. After 2 rounds of judging, it was chosen as one of the 19 finalists.
The Reel Impact Film Festival explores how video is used to spread messages, drive change, and achieve goals for social impact organizations. Every year they host a festival in San Francisco showcasing short films and “promo reels” used by social impact organizations to share their message. Once we found out we were a finalist, we knew we had to attend the event! How could we miss our video being shown at a film festival? (And let’s be honest will that ever happen again…)
Celebrate EDU won the “Most Moving Video” award!
Last week, we went to San Francisco and attended the festival. We met some wonderful people and watched all 19 of the incredible videos that were chosen. At the end of the night, they gave out 6 awards and Celebrate EDU won the “Most Moving Video” award! I think Brent and I both sat in awe for a full minute before walking up and accepting the award. It was such a surreal and incredible moment. One I will never forget.
A big thank you to the Reel Impact Film Festival and to Michael Miller at Sun Prairie Films, our long-time collaborator who worked with me and my crazy family to make this video so awesome. Also, thank you to everyone who shared it! Without you this would have never happened. If you haven’t had a chance to share it yet, there is never a bad time, just click here. Here are some photos from the event:
