AWARDS NEWS!!
Kim Rittberg & her Henry Street Media team won 5 awards this year for Digital video series!
We are so excited to announce Kim Rittberg won 5 awards across 2 digital video series she and her team produced for the LGBTQ+ nonprofit The It Gets Better Project whose mission is to uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth around the globe. Kim was the executive producer and creative director for the series. Watch the series here
The Video Series ‘Writing Our Dictionary’ has won a Webby Honor, a Shorty Impact Award, a Platinum MarCom Award from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) and a Gold Telly Award.
'WRITING OUR OWN DICTIONARY’: OUR PITCH & OUR GOAL
Our goal in the "Writing Our Own Dictionary" Video series was to educate and explain LGBTQ+ 'labels' in a funny, upbeat and positive way. Link to series is here. It is also being used within the curriculum in the L.A. school system.
This 4-part series features first-person interviews with LGBTQ+ folks explaining what labels mean, with each video focusing explains what a term means like transgender, gender nonbinary, pansexual and bisexual. Each video includes a fun, surprising ‘learning moment’ that teaches the viewers in a way that they won't even realize they’re learning as well as lighthearted and thoughtful interviews. We focused on art direction and took extra care to make each video highly stylized and art directed, with each set and video having its own color palette, its own props, and visual ‘theme.’
ABOUT THE AWARDS
The Webbys (a.k.a. The Oscars of the Internet) received over 13,000 submissions this year.
The MarCom Awards run by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) honors excellence in marketing and communication while recognising the creativity, hard work, and generosity of industry professionals. Since its inception in 2004, MarCom has evolved into “one of the largest, most-respected creative competitions in the world.”
The Telly Awards is a widely known and highly respected national and international competition and received over 12,000 entries.
We are so proud of the work that the team and I put into this. Most importantly, we've gotten feedback on the positive impact it has had on people –both young people and adults – and I’m honored to be a part of it.
VIDEO PRODUCTION LESSONS/TAKEAWAYS
My focus was to keep the tone consistently celebratory and fun and always keep the audience in mind. The target audience was teens and tweens looking for information and guidance, so the videos had colorful sets with vivid graphics. To get a short history of the word we kept editing until it was a very tight ‘learning moment’ - one that factual but light, with a theatrical backgrounds with active motion graphics and humorous music as well. You barely even notice you’re learning! Lastly, we wanted to make it pop, so each video had a very curated art direction, with a unique metaphorical visual theme (music, art & paint pouring, language & letters) which showcase the high production value.
Trailer for It Gets Better ‘Writing Our Own Dictionary’ series - Executive Produced & Creative Directed by Kim Rittberg & Henry Street Media - winner of Webby Honor, Platinum MarCom Award and Gold Telly awards.
'LGBTQ+ FUNDAMENTALS’: OUR PITCH & OUR GOAL
It Gets Better approached me after the success of Writing Our Own Dictionary series to revamp their #1 landing page, the GLOSSARY PAGE which features the definitions of a few dozen words.
Our goal was the create short-form videos (under 1 minute) to explain what each word means, to help the young people who go there for answers. The challenge was to create fun, relatable, accessible, youthful content that also feels cohesive across the nearly 20 pieces of content.
I focused on 3 different style: Illustrated Videos, a stylized cutout archival footage style, and a first-person ‘narrator’ style which was live action.
This series has won a Gold MarCom Award and you can see the series here.
VIDEO PRODUCTION LESSONS/TAKEAWAYS
You can achieve a cohesive video series even without the videos being exactly the same - this was achieved through 3 different styles but unified tone and colors. We also kept these videos very short - between 20 seconds and 1 minute as they will live as one touch point on a person’s learning journey - it doesn’t need to provide the full history but enough to help someone on their path.
ABOUT THE AWARDS
The MarCom Awards run by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) honors excellence in marketing and communication while recognising the creativity, hard work, and generosity of industry professionals. Since its inception in 2004, MarCom has evolved into “one of the largest, most-respected creative competitions in the world.”
Video for “Questioning” in the LGBTQ+ Fundamentals series for It Gets Better. Winner of 2022 MarCom Gold award.
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