It was more than an idea. It was an epiphany. And it propelled our little creative agency in rural Maine toward the bigger vision that we present today.
The pandemic had rolled in, and teams everywhere were disbanding under clouds of uncertainty and apprehension. Yet the world continued, and we all found new appreciation for the “essential workers” in our midst. Stories of selflessness and innovation were all around. If only there were a way to easily capture, edit and share. There wasn’t.
The video above is taken from a Zoom call with my staff in March 2020. Our three-person Hero Media Arts agency had just discovered the power of video storytelling for the “normal heroic” - the small business owners who contribute so much to the fabric of community. The videos were shot with DSLRs in a cinematic approach, but it was the character they revealed and the viewer appreciation they sparked that made them outsized performers. “Non-commercial commercials,” we called them.
In a changing, remote world, could we crowdsource that approach? Harness the cameras in everyone’s pocket, inspire them to the see the worthy characters around them, build a platform for easy file upload and editing, and find a cost structure and target market that made sense. How hard could it be?
We started with Skype and Zoom, along with everyone else. Since we were no longer bound by geography, could we find a random small business owner to interview and get them to Dropbox some homemade video files? We did, and our test with Bonta Gelato from Bend, Oregon told us to keep going.
The rise of social media video during that time was allowing for a lower-fidelity approach. We discovered that the emotional response of our DSLR pieces could be replicated in short form on a phone. It doesn’t need to be cinematic, we said, it just needs to be real.
The entire video production world was scrambling for new options. Some promising startups failed before their time. Other solutions were abandoned when the pandemic dissipated.
But the Hero mission was set: build a community storytelling tool to benefit small businesses and local economies. Allow their stories to be recognized as valuable and elevated by others, at an affordable price with a seamless workflow. Community video production at scale.
Dedicated to phone-based capture, we embraced technology as it advanced. We experimented with proxy files uploaded through third-party apps and tried to source local mobile videographers to shoot b-roll.
We adopted and modified a podcasting software for higher video resolutions and to allow live direction from a producer.
We were confident in the mission but patchworking a substitute for tools that did not yet exist.
Artificial Intelligence was the afterburner.
Suddenly we could clean up audio files that before would have been unusable. We built a RAG system that would generate interview questions and strategic briefs based on a URL input.
As a bootstrapped startup aiming for scale through a marketplace, we needed a software product that we didn’t have the money or expertise to build. Vibe coding changed that over a weekend, and suddenly a new path of self-empowerment opened.
We expect an AI rough cut engine trained in the “Hero Way” will be incorporated soon, further reducing costs and opening more storytelling opportunities for our network.
Much has been written about the future of work and how the adoption of AI will impact both nimble entrepreneurs and battleship enterprise companies. Not only can we do more with less, (which is a broad sweep of a deep subject), it’s not overreach to say that AI is making the Hero Network mission possible.
The irony: a video company based on human connection relies on AI for its underpinnings. We see it as a magical means to an end, and its adoption into our company will remain an interesting dance.
Society is wrestling with the fact that we can no longer believe our eyes. But here is a brand promise: any human visage you see in a Hero Network video is a real person, in conversation with another.
We believe that curiosity and encouragement, nods and smiles, is the currency of the common good.
- Dean Gyorgy
