A garden is the best time-lapse subject there is and almost nobody films it properly. The transformation from a vacant lot in March to a harvest in August is the entire pitch for the organization, and it happens slowly enough that a single shoot day misses all of it.
The Kansas City angle
Kansas City has a real urban-agriculture movement: Kansas City Community Gardens' network across the metro, the farms on vacant east-side lots, the school and church gardens, the Wyandotte County growers, and the food-access organizations that connect them to the pantries. Most are funded by small grants and a spring plant sale, and most have a website with photos from three years ago.
The local angle is the lot itself. A specific corner in a specific neighborhood, filmed across a season, is a story every Kansas City funder understands.
Three short visits across one growing season
We would split the shoot day into three short visits: a spring build day with the volunteers and the first beds, a mid-summer morning with the growers and the first harvest, and an early-fall visit for the market or the pantry delivery. A locked-off wide shot from the same spot each time. Interviews with the garden coordinator and two growers, in the garden, while they work.
A two-minute season film for the annual appeal and the plant sale, a sixty-second cut for the neighborhood association and the school, and the three-visit time-lapse as a vertical.
What to actually make
- A two-minute season film — bare lot to harvest, three visits, the growers' voices.
- A plant-sale and volunteer piece — sixty seconds for the spring drive.
- A time-lapse vertical — the same frame in three seasons.
- Program clips — thirty seconds each for the school, pantry and training programs.
What it costs in Kansas City
For most of the businesses in this post the right starting point is the Story Film at $4,500: a full shoot day with interviews, cut into a two-to-three-minute film. Every package is published on our nonprofit video page, and the video production cost page explains what moves the number up or down. There is no travel fee anywhere in the metro, Overland Park to Lee's Summit to Lawrence.
How the shoot works
It is the same two people on every project, Josh and Brandon. We scope it on a call, write the shot list, show up with lights and a lav mic, and stay out of the way of your customers. A first cut lands in about two weeks with unlimited revisions after that, and you own every frame, including the raw footage on request.
If this is your business, the nonprofit video page has the packages, the examples and the calendar link. If you are not sure which package fits, this is how we work and why the prices are on the site.