Tell us a bit about your organization and what your specialty is in the film and video space.

People’s Television is an Emmy®-nominated creative production studio based in New York City and Washington, DC. With acclaimed films sold to Netflix and Hulu and honored at top festivals like Sundance and SXSW, our studio recently launched a commercial director roster to bring that same cinematic vision and boundary-pushing creativity to branded content and advertising.

What is your organization’s ethos and how does it set you apart from industry competitors?

Our ethos is all about human-driven storytelling. We focus on elevating important causes and campaigns, creating work that not only resonates emotionally but also sparks action. What sets us apart is our ability to connect audiences to issues through authentic, people-centered stories. Beyond filmmaking, we also help organize events, activations, distribution partnerships – the work expands beyond the screen to every format that we can reach people and move them to action.

How can people join or learn more about what you do?

We’ve just launched our new case studies — take a look to see our recent work on our website, Peoples.tv. You can also follow us on social (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn) for behind-the-scenes content and updates on what we’re creating next.

Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?

Our film in partnership with the Clean Slate Initiative aimed to illuminate the stigma surrounding arrest and conviction records. This often leaves individuals with an indelible mark long after they’ve paid their debt to society and makes it much more difficult for them to move on and pursue their goals.

This PSA challenges this stigma by reframing the idea of “records” in a positive light: we invited real people with past convictions to share the personal records that truly define them — diplomas, family photos, heartfelt birthday cards, letters — celebrating achievements and cherished memories. Their heartfelt testimonies show the whole person, full of hopes and dreams with so much more on their ‘record’ that defines who they really are.

In partnership with the Department of Veteran Affairs, we produced a series of mental health public service announcements designed to inform Veterans about the benefits they’re entitled to. Each PSA focuses on how VA supports Veterans experiencing specific mental health challenges, from depression and anxiety to military sexual trauma. Featuring real Veterans, our creative team developed original concepts and our production crew brought them to life with support from our creative agency partner, Reingold. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ General Mental Health campaign shatters stigma, inspires action, and connects Veterans with life-changing mental health resources.

In anticipation of the solar eclipse sweeping across the United States, we teamed up with the Simons Foundation for their campaign spotlighting the different science community activations happening across the country along that path of totality. Our team spread out across multiple locations, capturing a range of celebrations- from a 3,000-person viewing party hosted by RabioLab’s Molly Webster in Austin, Texas, to a science education and eclipse-themed drag show in the small town of Spencer, Indiana. In the lead-up to the big day, we visited Erie, Pennsylvania, where we documented the fusion of media art and science at FEED Media Art, aimed at fostering excitement in the vibrant local community. In Arkansas, we joined the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, as they packed the fun of their main facility into a van and hit the road with their Mobile Makerspace, engaging rural schools with the music and culture of the Ozarks and science of the eclipse in their efforts to inspire as many Arkansans as possible. Although totality lasted only a handful of minutes, the connections formed from Texas to Maine will last a lifetime. We want the public to be able to discover the stories of how this moment in time redefined our connection to science, one another, and the cosmos.

What are you most proud of about this piece? What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?

In our video ‘For the Record’ for Clean Slate Initiative, we featured real people who have been personally impacted by incarceration. Because the subject matter was so emotional and vulnerable, it required a lot of care to honor each voice. The biggest challenge was weaving each perspective into a piece that felt both cohesive and distinct, making sure every story stood on its own while also contributing to the larger mission of the Clean Slate Initiative. Praise Paige, our director, and Jenny Catherall navigated this seamlessly and effectively. In the end, I’m most proud that we were able to capture this balance of the individual and collective story and that the PSA garnered over 2.3 million views on Youtube.

For our Mental Health PSA’s for VA, the biggest challenge was that we had no room for error in our schedule: each PSA needed to be captured in 4-5 hours, meaning that any slips in the schedule would eat into the production schedule for the next PSA, or push our crew into overtime. Our director, Slater Dixon, helped us manage these distinct creative approaches, breaking them each down in pre-production to ensure they were producible within our time constraints. Because of this diligent preparation, our crew worked efficiently, leap frogging the lighting, art direction, and blocking throughout our three days of production. We were able to execute on this ambitious schedule without going into overtime by carefully rehearsing and planning each shot and finding a studio location that could accommodate our need for the blend of standing sets and virtual production.

Filming for the Simons Foundation In the Path of Totality, directed by Jenny Catherall, was so rewarding because we were chasing an event in real time that was a fleeting moment in history. While this made production really special for us, timing was the biggest challenge because our crews had to be timed perfectly with the eclipse in multiple states. Knowing that masses of people would be traveling into the path of totality to see the eclipse, we had to focus on scheduling and planning so we did not experience any delays while filming. Jenny Catherall and Adam Simon (director of the Arkansas episode) helped plan well in advance to find the stories that led up to the eclipse and time out the releases leading up to the big moment.

Do you have any advice to other filmmakers based on your career or your team’s approach to work?

Building trust ahead of time with your filmmaking collaborators is fundamental to a successful production. I always recommend that emerging filmmakers take time away from their client projects to build working relationships with fellow filmmakers on self guided or independent projects. It’s often that these experiences and working relationships help prepare you for working on client-facing projects with high creative expectations and demanding timelines.

Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?

For our VA mental health PSA’s, we filmed six unique concepts in three days, using a mix of virtual production and standing sets to allow us to deliver entirely distinct creative and cast for each issue area we were highlighting.

Complete this sentence: ‘Great video storytelling is…’

…. character-driven.