Company Profile: Blue Chalk Media

In the Dumbo district of Brooklyn, there’s a rare unicorn of a media company called Blue Chalk Media. They posses the ability to produce award winning long and short-form documentary style videos with stunning visuals, but a majority of their work is branded content. Now why aren’t more media companies buying into this model? And why is this an effective model for Blue Chalk?

Blue Chalk Media is a media company that produces work for clients and work for journalistic outlets. Their clients range from Nike to BBC World News and everything that they do showcases their stunning visuals. Pam Huling, Blue Chalk COO, talked to us about all the different outlets that they cater to but the point that she drove home was that they produce content that visualizes the human experience.

Both Pam Huling and Greg Moyer, CEO, have experience with documentary filmmaking and television production. Greg Moyer held senior positions at the Discovery Channel and Pam Huling was at MediaStorm prior to starting Blue Chalk in November 2013. Blue Chalk spreads itself across two coasts with their creative team on the west coast in Portland, Oregon. In Portland they have their creative director, Rob Finch, who aggregated the creative talent that Blue Chalk possesses today. A University of Oregon School of Journalism alum, Julianne Parker, works as a producer after interning with Blue Chalk for around two years.

Greg Moyer explained how Blue Chalk is able to engage viewers for both their documentaries and branded content. He said, “Authenticity is the key to building trust”. This trust in Blue Chalk due to their transparency allows them to produce 90% client work and still engage with those viewers who watch them for their journalistic stories. Many hands shot up in the air when the term “branded content” was thrown around because we wanted to know what their ethical standpoint on branded content was. They explained to us that, “brands and publications can work to be mutually beneficial”. The content can engage the viewers because of strong characters and a narrative arc while reaching a wider audience, because of the commercial platform. For example, watch this advertisement done for Subaru:

Blue Chalk worked with The Enthusiast Network and Subaru to tell a story about Will Brady and his family who live on the Southern Oregon coast. This landscape is both beautiful and isolated. Brady calls it, “a wind magnet.” The Brady family has built their life around the wind. They own a kiteboarding school and a bed & breakfast on Floras Lake. Brady is a long time surfer and water sport enthusiast – a passion that his sons Reed and Josh have inherited. This short brand spot tells the story of how the family celebrates the natural environment they live in, navigating both on and off-road paths in their Subaru Outback. Rob Finch, Director Nick Midwig, Director of Photography Bruce Ely, Aerials/Assistant Camera James Allen, Editor Chip Sloan, Sound Design Created by: Blue Chalk Media (http://bluechalk.com)

As journalism students, we all wanted to know about their documentary work, so they showed us a piece that just recently won a Communicator Award for their activism piece titled, “Burned Girl”: 

WonderWork is a charitable organization that provides free surgeries for children in the poorest countries of the world. Burned Girl tells the inspiring and powerfully emotional story of Ragini, a nine-year-old girl from a remote village in India who was severely burned and went untreated for seven and a half years before being seen by Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh, whose services were paid for by WonderWork through its BurnRescue partner organization. Brent Stirton/Getty Images, Co-Director Robert Wilson, Co-Director Greg Snider, Editor Dan Quintero, Assistant Editor Gayatri Kaul, Producer Jamie Francis, Additional cinematography Seth Lorinczi, Original music Digital One, Sound design Rob Finch, Creative Director Greg Moyer, Co-Executive Producer Pam Huling, Co-Executive Producer Created by Blue Chalk Media http://bluechalk.com View "Before and After: How Plastic Surgery Changed This Girl’s Life" on National Geographic's Short Film Showcase: http://bit.ly/1bZ11Dh

This piece really did show the human experience, but we were all surprised when at the end it was revealed that this too was promotional content. The real take away from this incredible meeting with Blue Chalk is that there are ethical questions to ask when creating promotional content that appears to be journalistic, but that it can also work and connect with an audience. At the end of our session, Greg Moyer left us with this quote:

“ The secret to documentary filmmaking is figuring out what part of the story that everybody can relate to”

— Greg Moyer