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A short-form video series filmed inside five North Carolina election centers, built to reach the voters who have stopped trusting the process, and to prove that it worked.
Nothing else in this proposal matters if the people we are trying to reach scroll past. Election skeptics have a finely tuned filter for anything that looks like an institution reassuring them, so every title and thumbnail in this series is built to get through that filter, not to look official.
Five rules govern every clip's packaging, and we test two titles per clip so the one skeptics actually click is the one that stays up.
"Who has a key to this room?" outperforms "Your ballots are secure" with this audience every time. The title is the doubt, said out loud.
The thumbnail shows the actual official, mid-sentence, with the county name in text. Local beats generic; a person beats a building.
A seal, a lock, a log book, a ballot in hand. Skeptics trust what they can see more than what they are told, so the object is in the thumbnail.
No flags, no red-and-blue color coding, no candidates, no slogans. Anything that reads as a side gets the clip dismissed before it plays.
White bold text on a dark scrim, one line, no starbursts or arrows. It should look like a caption from a neighbor's phone, not an ad.
A seal, an "official" label, an exclamation point, and an institution telling the viewer how to feel. To a skeptic this reads as the thing they already distrust.
Who has a key to this room?Their question, a real object, a county name. It invites the skeptic to check our work, which is exactly the posture that earns a view.
Placeholder imagery for now. Final thumbnails use frames from the tours themselves, chosen against the five rules above.
Gaston County
Surry County
Forsyth County
5 countiesTeam Democracy is taking voters inside election centers in Gaston, Surry, Forsyth, Randolph and the Triangle, alongside the county officials who run them. The people you most want in the room are the ones least likely to show up: voters who have decided elections are corrupt, run by someone else, or not worth their time.
Video is the way to put those voters in the room anyway. Not with a polished institutional message, which is exactly what they tune out, but with something closer to the tour itself: a local official, a locked door, a plain answer to a hard question.
The job of this series is to make the process visible, make it local, and make it measurable, so that by early November you can show what changed.
"We want to reach the people who are mistrustful of elections, or who have written them off entirely."Alison Tomas, NC Partnerships and Field Organizer, on our September 3 call
Institutions have lost this audience. Neighbors have not. Every clip is built on three rules that keep the series credible to a skeptic.
The on-camera guide at each stop is the county's own election director or board member. Someone the viewer might see at church or the hardware store, explaining the job they actually do.
Each clip is framed around the question a doubtful voter would actually ask. "Who has a key to this room?" "What happens if the count is off by one?" We ask it plainly and let the official answer without a script.
Seals, logs, dual custody, the audit table, the tabulator test. The camera lingers on the physical evidence, because for this audience a locked cabinet is worth more than a paragraph of assurance.
Every clip is delivered in vertical (9:16) for Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and in 16:9 for YouTube, the website and PBS or press use. 45 to 75 seconds each. Clips one and two land within about a week of the September tours so promotion can start early.
1Who has a key to this room?The election director walks the tour through the ballot storage room: seals, the sign-in log, who is allowed in and never alone. The clip that answers "somebody could just get in there."
2What if the count is off by one?Built from the Q&A. We hold on the toughest question an attendee asks and the official's unscripted answer. Real doubt, answered on camera, is the most shareable thing this series can produce.
3How a ballot becomes a numberThe largest stop and the panel format. We follow a single ballot from the voter's hand to the certified total, with the panelists explaining each hand-off. The explainer piece for the series.
4Five counties. Same rules.A cross-county montage: five officials, five rooms, the same safeguards in each. The wrap-up clip that turns individual tours into a statewide pattern, timed for the final push before early voting ends.
Team Democracy is designing pre- and post-assessments with UC San Diego. The clips are built so their performance can sit alongside that data rather than beside it.
Every clip carries one call to action and its own trackable link, so you can see which question moved people and which county's story traveled furthest.
One ask per clip, one link per ask. Survey completions and tour sign-ups are attributable to the clip that drove them.
The percentage of viewers who reach the official's answer, not just the hook. The honest measure of whether skeptics kept watching.
A skeptic sharing a clip to argue with it still spreads the official's answer. We track shares as the primary engagement metric.
Clip release dates and links are logged so UC San Diego can pair viewership with pre/post assessment shifts by county.
Ammon Ehrisman (director, camera A) and Onyx (camera B and audio) travel together to every stop. We arrive an hour before doors for setup and stay an hour after for a sit-down interview with the county's lead official and teardown.
| Date | County | Format | On site | Clip delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wed Sept 9 | Gaston | Intros, keynote, facility tour, informal Q&A | 4:30 to 8:30 pm | Clip 1 by Sept 23 |
| Thu Sept 10 | Surry | Intros, keynote, facility tour, informal Q&A | 4:30 to 8:30 pm | Clip 2 by Sept 24 |
| Thu Oct 8 | Forsyth | Larger event, 3 to 4 speaker panel + moderator, tour | 4:30 to 8:30 pm | Clip 3 by Oct 21 |
| Mid Oct, TBD | Randolph | Intros, keynote, facility tour, Q&A | 4:30 to 8:30 pm | Clip 4 by Oct 29, or 8 business days after the last stop |
| Mid Oct, TBD | Wake or Durham | High-profile Triangle stop, panel format likely | 4:30 to 8:30 pm |
Approve this approach, confirm the interview questions, and connect us with each county's point person and your media specialist.
Two-camera coverage plus the official interview at each stop. Footage backed up on site the same night.
Clips 1 and 2 delivered with captions and trackable links so promotion starts two weeks before the next stop.
Forsyth panel, Randolph, and the Triangle stop. Clip 3 delivered within a week of Forsyth.
Clip 4 delivered, raw footage and media pack handed to your media engagement specialist for PBS or press.
Priced at BlueForest's nonprofit rate, 35% below our corporate rate card. The base package covers every tour and the four clips. The options can be added now or after the first two stops.
A signed quote and a 50% deposit ($6,120 on the base package) holds the crew for all five dates. The balance is due on delivery of the final clip.
Bank transfer or ACH at no charge, or card with a 2.99% processing fee. Invoices come from BlueForest Studios via Xero with a pay-online link.
Additional clip versions beyond the four, paid media or ad spend, and any third-party venue or permit fees. If dates for Randolph or the Triangle stop shift, we will do everything we can to move with them.
Reply with the option you'd like and I'll send the e-signature quote the same day. If anything here should change, tell me what you'd adjust. I'm open to reshaping it.