Team Lethbridge Mission 2022

The Challenge

Fifty community leaders. Twenty-three organisations. The City, the County, the University, the College, the Chamber, the Housing Authority, social services, arts, culture, and sports. All traveling to the Alberta Legislature to speak with one voice.

The problem was noise.

In Edmonton, every municipality and industry group competes for cabinet attention. Slide decks pile up. Meetings blur together. The delegation needed something that would stay in the room after they left. A video that could travel where they couldn’t and keep Lethbridge visible long after the handshakes ended.

The Solution

We embedded with the delegation from the pre-dawn bus departure to the halls of the Legislature.

The conditions nearly broke us.

Wind chill hit -46°C. Batteries drained in minutes. We rotated gear constantly, keeping batteries warm inside our jackets to maintain continuous coverage. Gimbals threatened to seize. The crew risked frostbite for exterior shots.

Then the hotel caught fire.

The night before the main legislative meetings, a fire broke out where the delegation was staying. Access was restricted. Our shot list was useless. We had to rebuild the plan on the fly, finding corners in the Legislature, maximising whatever windows we could get.

The chaos forced us to work faster and trust our instincts. What we captured was better than what we’d planned.

The bus ride became the heart of the film. Fifty leaders in close quarters. The Superintendent of Schools beside a developer. The University President next to the Housing Authority CEO. Unscripted conversation. Strategy sessions. The footage proved the coalition was real, not just a logo on a brochure.

In the Legislature, we captured genuine interactions with MLAs. Not photo ops. Real conversations. MLA Nathan Neudorf engaging with delegates. Ministers listening. That footage matters because it’s proof of access. It shows the delegation wasn’t shouting into a void. They were in the room, being heard.

The visual strategy mirrored the message. The intimate, handheld footage on the bus showed the human relationships. The aerial shots of the coulees and river valley showed the landscape those relationships were protecting. Ground-level was the team. Aerial was the stakes.

The Result

The video became a tool the delegation used during and after the mission.

Delegates shared it with their provincial counterparts. “Look at who stands with us.” The footage of twenty-three organisations working together was proof of alignment. That kind of unity reduces political risk for funders. They knew that money going to Lethbridge wouldn’t get tangled in local politics.

In the months and years following the mission, the region secured significant provincial investments in the exact areas the delegation had prioritised.

$10.2 million for a 42-unit supportive housing complex.

$9.2 million for water treatment plant upgrades.

$4 million for emergency shelter expansion.

We can’t claim the video caused those outcomes. Advocacy is complex. But the video was part of a campaign that worked. It kept Lethbridge visible. It humanised abstract policy asks. It gave decision-makers something to remember.

What the project taught us is that the best advocacy content doesn’t look like marketing. It looks like evidence. When a Minister sees unscripted footage of a community working together, they believe it in a way they never believe a polished testimonial.

We also learned what we’re capable of under pressure. Frozen gear. A hotel fire. A schedule in chaos. We delivered anyway. That’s what documentary production demands. You don’t control the conditions. You adapt to them.

The mission was called Team Lethbridge. The video proved the team was real.

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