ACTIVE PARTNERSHIP
LOCAL BUSINESS · MAUI
BLACK PROJECT SUP
Six months in with a Maui paddle company — campaigns, an original series, and a content engine that keeps running.
CLIENT
Black Project SUP — Maui
CLIENT
RELATIONSHIP
Ongoing · six months and counting
SCOPE
Content strategy, direction, cinematography, editing
OUTPUT
Product campaigns · Unscripted series · vertical cutdowns
THE SITUATION
Black Project makes paddles on Maui for stand-up paddling, foiling, and sprint racing. Their gear has taken more than forty championship titles. Among people who race, the brand needs no introduction.
That's also the problem. When a product is genuinely elite, it's easy to assume the product will do the talking. It does — to the people who already know. Everyone else needs a reason to look, and a paddle release film alone doesn't give them one. It gives them one good day, and then silence until the next launch.
What a company like this actually needs isn't just a film. It's a reason to show up every month, in more than one format, without hiring a marketing department to do it.
THE APPROACH
Build something that runs, not something that launches.
01
Ask what it's for
A paddle release isn't sold by a hero film. It's sold by being present the whole season. So the plan wasn't a film — it was a system: campaign films, cutdowns for social, and something Black Project could own that had nothing to do with a launch calendar.
02
Earn the room
That last piece became Unscripted — Chris Freeman, the owner, answering real questions from real paddlers. No script, no set. The brand's credibility has always been Chris's knowledge, so the format is mostly a matter of getting out of the way and letting him talk.
03
Absorb the complexity
A company this size doesn't have a marketing department, so the schedule, the formats, and the archive sit with us — starting with a shoot window that wind and swell open, and sometimes close the same morning. Chris gives us an afternoon and his answers. Everything between the water and the post going live is ours.
HOW ONE SHOOT FEEDS A YEAR
CAMPAIGN SHOOT
Athletes on Maui — SUP, foil, sprint.
HERO + CUTDOWNS
A 60-second film, then shorter social edits from the same material.
UNSCRIPTED
Long-form episodes that run between launches, not because of them.
VERTICALS
Shorts and Reels cut from the episodes. Then the next campaign.
THE WORK
PRODUCT RELEASE CAMPAIGNS — 60S HERO FILMS AND SOCIAL CUTDOWNS
EDITOR · DP SLATER NABORSKI
UNSCRIPTED — AN ORIGINAL SERIES, 10–15 MIN PER EPISODE
EDITOR · DP SLATER NABORSKI
Cut down for where people will actually watch
Each episode becomes a run of vertical shorts for YouTube and Instagram — the same conversation, sized for the feed.
"Chris Freeman's quote — ask him what changed for the business in six months, and what it's like having someone handle the whole content side rather than delivering one video."
Chris Freeman
Founder Black Project SUP
OUTCOME
SIX MONTHS IN
6 months
continuous production — campaigns, series, and social, still running
6 films
a series introduction and two episodes, plus the verticals cut from them
2x press
picked up by SUPboarder Magazine — at launch, and again at episode two
"It's a simple approach, but one that continues to land well."
SUPboarder Magazine, on Unscripted Episode 2
The trade press covered the series twice without being pitched a product — once at launch, describing "real questions, direct answers, and no over-produced scripting," and again at episode two, noting the format had settled into something "quick, useful, and easy to dip into."
WHY THIS TOOK MORE THAN A SHOOT DAY
A product launch film is a transaction. You book a crew, you get a film, and three weeks later the post has stopped working and there's nothing behind it.
Six months in with Black Project, every piece feeds the next one. Campaign footage becomes social cutdowns. Unscripted fills the gaps between launches and then becomes a month of verticals. The next paddle campaign starts with a year of material and a format that already has an audience.
It also produced something a product film almost never does: a trade magazine wrote about the series twice — not about a paddle, about the format. You don't get earned media from a launch video. You get it from making something worth following.
None of that is available on a shoot day. It's only available to someone who's still there in month six.