Miracle League
San Diego × Padres

One recap video. Document the day. Get it done.

The brief was straightforward: Miracle League San Diego was hosting an event with the San Diego Padres. They needed a recap video — a standard deliverable, a common ask.

I took the job. And then I looked at what was actually in front of me: young athletes with disabilities playing the game they love at a major league level, backed by a professional franchise that took the partnership seriously. A recap video would document that. It wouldn't give the organization something to fundraise with, to recruit sponsors, to earn the next partnership.

Recognizing when the deliverable is the wrong deliverable.

The scope they wrote and the scope they needed weren't the same thing. What the organization actually needed was durable content — films that would hold up in a grant application, on a donor page, in a pitch to a prospective sponsor. The Padres partnership gave them credibility. The right video package would let them use it.

I restructured the production on-site: three films with different narrative angles, each built for a specific use case, all shot within the same window. Same crew, same day, three times the strategic value.

Every interview question was an asset. Every moment on the field was a decision.

Instead of capturing the day chronologically, I structured the shoot around three story architectures running simultaneously — athlete stories, organizational narrative, partnership showcase. You're working around a live event with talent who aren't professional subjects, making real-time decisions about what the edit needs before you're in the edit. Knowing the script before you have the footage is the job.

Three films. Three jobs to be done.

The hero film carries the full emotional arc — built for awareness and social. The second centers athlete and family voices, built for donors. The third is a clean partnership showcase for sponsor and Padres-facing use. Each works alone. Together they cover every conversation the organization needs to have.