The Big Picture

When you tell the story of a man with more than 6,000 children in under four minutes, it presents more than a few challenges, but even greater opportunity.

As part of the celebration of J. Mark Davis’ retirement from the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, Mud Mile teamed up with Park Studios in Atlanta to create a video honoring his legacy with a program that’s given away more than $66 million in scholarships.

It’s a vision that started two years ago and culminated with a creative concept to show Mark walking through his 30 year career. But we wanted to be sure that at the end, all those little moments showed the big picture. So we built a photo installation, laying out a grid to display hundreds of pictures, that allowed Mark to walk between them, but when the camera pulled back, it created the number 30.

It took 20 hours, 10 people and a full weekend (with lots of Coke products!) to setup and eventually film.

We used visual elements from the piece, such as the floating photos, for interstitials throughout the weekend leading up to the retirement celebration where the full-length video played. That evening event, which included some Hamilton musical inspired songs, ended with the Big Picture video.

Here’s to the big picture! Happy retirement, Mark!