Case Study: Interviews and Event Video Production for UNCF's SHE Leads with Stacey Abrams and Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis
- Aug 11
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 12
Last month, Shinobi Sound handled full production and post-production for SHE Leads, a UNCF event that brings together visionary leaders, philanthropists, and advocates to celebrate the transformative leadership of women at HBCUs and the lasting impact of investing in their success. The day included stand-up interviews with Stacey Abrams and Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis, live speech coverage featuring Stacey Abrams, Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis, and Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and a full b-roll and audio capture of the event.
This case study walks through how we approached it, because interview and event work sits at the center of what we do, and the difference between adequate event video and cinematic event video is decided in the details.
THE ASSIGNMENT
UNCF needed two distinct things captured in one event, and each demands a different discipline:
First, controlled stand-up interviews with two of the most recognizable voices in the room: Stacey Abrams, HBCU graduate and lifelong education advocate, and Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis. Interview footage like this becomes the narrative spine of everything cut afterward, so it has to be technically flawless. There are no second takes with speakers at this level, and no amount of post-production rescues badly captured source material.
Second, live event coverage of the speeches and the room itself. Live coverage is the opposite problem: nothing is controlled, nothing repeats, and the moment you miss is gone. Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole addressing an audience of leaders gathered to invest in women at HBCUs happens exactly once.
OUR APPROACH TO PRODUCTION
The Interviews:
We built each interview setup around two Sony FX cinema cameras, giving every subject a primary angle and a complementary second angle. Two cameras working simultaneously means an editor can cut naturally between perspectives, hold a moment longer, and shape pacing in post without jump cuts or coverage gaps. Interviews shot on a single camera lock the edit before it begins. Interviews shot on multiple cameras allows for much more flexibility in post.
Lighting came from our Aputure STORM kit, shaped for a cinematic interview look: dimension on faces, controlled falloff, and a frame that flatters the subject without ever calling attention to the light itself. Speakers of this stature are photographed and filmed constantly. The bar for how they should look on camera is set by the best footage of them that exists, and that was the bar we lit for.
Audio ran through our dedicated Sound Devices 833 mixer, where we recorded and monitored the audio performance throughout. We treat production sound as its own discipline rather than a camera accessory, because dialogue is the product in interview work. Every word Stacey Abrams delivered needed to arrive in post clean, full, and ready to carry a final edit.
The Event Coverage:
For the speeches, we shifted from controlled precision to anticipation. Live speakers move, rooms breathe, and audiences react, so coverage has to be positioned for the moments before they happen: the speaker at the podium, the faces in the audience receiving the message, the reactions that give an edit its emotional truth.
Alongside the speeches, we captured b-roll of the event itself: the arrivals, the room, the conversations between sessions, the texture that lets a final edit feel like being there. And we recorded the complete audio of the event, so every speech and every moment on stage exists as usable source material rather than a memory.
POST-PRODUCTION
We carried the project through post in-house: multi-cam editing across the interview and event footage, color grading to unify the controlled interview setups with the live coverage, and full audio post to bring speech and interview sound to a finished, broadcast-ready standard.
The final deliverable was a cinematic recap video, delivered in two versions: one fully captioned for social and accessibility, and one clean version without captions. UNCF published the recap on their YouTube channel, where it now carries the event's message to audiences far beyond the room.
That last stage matters more in event work than almost anywhere else. Live rooms are acoustically hostile, and the distance between raw event audio and finished event audio is the distance between footage that feels amateur and footage that feels inevitable. Handling production sound and audio post under the same roof means the person mixing the final edit knows exactly how every track was captured.
The finished edit opens where it should: with Stacey Abrams' own words. "SHE Leads is an example of what happens when we never forget where we came from," she says, before reflecting on her own matriculation at an HBCU, guided by a woman who served as president of Spelman College and as a role model for women who would never have the chance to meet her. Her closing line gave the edit, and the event, its thesis: when she leads, the world becomes better.
Our job was to make sure a message like that arrived on screen with the weight it deserved.
WHY THIS WORK IS DIFFERENT FROM CONTENT PRODUCTION
We've posted previously about our podcast content systems and batch content creation process, where we turn single filming days into month-long publishing pipelines. Event and interview work draws on the same crew and the same gear, applied to a different promise.
Content systems are built on repeatability. Event coverage is built on the fact that nothing repeats. The skills transfer in one direction beautifully: a crew that can capture an unrepeatable live moment cleanly has no trouble with a controlled studio day. The reverse is not true, and it is why event experience is worth asking any production company about before trusting them with a room full of speakers you cannot reassemble.
For organizations planning this kind of event, the practical checklist looks like this:
Dual-camera interviews, minimum | Single-camera interviews limit every edit that follows.
Dedicated production sound | If audio is being handled by whoever is closest to the camera, the speeches are at risk.
A b-roll plan, not b-roll hopes | The texture shots that make a recap breathe have to be assigned to someone.
One team through post | When production and post-production live in different companies, problems discovered in the edit have no one to answer for them.
THE TAKEAWAY
This shoot asked for two different jobs in one day. We set up controlled interviews with Stacey Abrams and Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis on cinema cameras with shaped lighting and dedicated sound, then transitioned into run-and-gun coverage to capture the live speeches, the b-roll, and the full audio of the event as it happened. The recap we cut from all of it is now up on UNCF's YouTube channel, carrying the event's message well past the room it was spoken in.
That's the standard we bring to interview and event production.
If your organization has an event or a story that deserves cinematic treatment, get in touch. And if you want to see how we approach ongoing content, our batch content creation breakdown shows the other side of what we build.
Shinobi Sound is an Atlanta-based cinematic podcast and branded content company offering full production and post-production for interviews, events, and branded content. From cinema cameras and shaped lighting to dedicated production sound and in-house audio post, we bring the full pipeline to every project.
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