In high school at Concord Academy eight years or so ago, pals Tripp Clemens and Harvey Burrell liked to make videos together. They went to separate colleges but, together with Clemens' childhood friend Will Humphrey, decided to turn that passion into a company producing commercial and documentary films, working on shoots during vacations. More recently, they became a full-time social enterprise, making short and long-form films for "People and companies creating change," says Humphrey, who is a partner and producer.
Called Windy Films, the company makes two-to-four minute videos with a documentary feel for for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. Plus, they create longer-form documentaries which are funded through crowd-funding campaigns and grants. The most recent, Endless Abilities, is about athletes with disabilities. They're working on another about a group that's created a successful malaria vaccine.
"We want to fill the gap between the high-production values of films you'd see in a theater and stories of impact you see in documentaries," says Humphrey.
Plus, they aim to create videos that encourage viewers to take action, rather than simply going on to watch some adorable cats. "We want to make documentaries sexy," says Clemens. "To increase awareness through attractive visuals."
To achieve that goal, the partners spend many months with subjects to really get to know them. They also travel from site to site in a 16-foot production trailer they built from the ground up. Gear is stored in the back, with mobile editing and same-day production equipment in front. Having that vehicle means the partners can be as unobtrusive as possible while getting to know and filming their subjects. Six months ago, they took a big step, renovating their own 5,000-square-foot brick and mortar studio in East Boston.
The partners' first client, back while they were still in school, was the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, which they landed through cold calling. By the time they all had graduated in 2013 and 2014, they'd worked with 30 different clients at one time or another. Somewhere along the line , they decided to focus on people doing social impact work, first concentrating on nonprofits, then broadening to include for-profits. Their clients range from the Healthy Food Project, an effort by McAuley House, which serves food to homeless individuals in Providence RI, to Sanaria, a company partnering with the Harvard Biorobotics Laboratory to create a malaria vaccine using robots. The partners are now working on a long-form documentary about these efforts in Africa.
