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In late 2022, we spent a day on location in Monroe City, Missouri, shooting a short video to introduce Scott Hays, the then incoming president of the National Pork Producers Council.  

Family, Farm, Future: Introducing NPPC President Scott Hays debuted at the National Pork Industry Forum to introduce the new president to over 60,000 U.S. pork producers and give them a sense of this new leader, his operations and his values. 

Directed by documentarian Kyle Arpke, who worked with a three-person crew, the video was shot primarily around Two Mile Pork, Hays’ fifth-generation family farm.  

We produced the project around a loose, unscripted theme, following the energy of the interviews to capture a sense of the man and his approach more organically. This led to a delightful narrative but, not surprisingly, made for a very busy day, as we raced to capture footage in the short daylight hours of mid-November. Probably our favorite moment was discovering that given, the size of his extended family, every child and grandchild in his family has been christened with a birth order number.

Having those family members share their numbers on camera led to a wonderfully human sequence toward the end of the piece. 

What truly made the shoot remarkable was the Hays’ gracious, welcoming approach to the production – from feeding the crew lunch (ham sandwiches, of course) to inviting everyone to an impromptu, multigeneration campfire cookout of s’mores.  

We are extremely proud that this piece won both a Silver Telly for Non-Broadcast Biography and the People’s Gold Telly as well.