Case Study / Music / Documentary Series

Free Guitars 4 Kids

The story of a first guitar, told by the people who never forgot theirs.

ROLE

Producer/DP

CLIENT

Free Guitars 4 Kids

YEAR

2025

PRODUCTION

Oak & Glen

— 01 — The Ask

Move people without preaching at them.

Free Guitars 4 Kids gives instruments to kids who otherwise wouldn't have access to music. They needed a series that could move people without preaching at them. Real musicians. Real stories. The kind of films that make someone donate before they finish watching.

— 02 — The Approach

Every musician remembers their first guitar.

We helped amplify and polish FG4K’s #MYFIRSTGUITAR series.
Our approach was simple: get them talking about it, and you don't need a script.

Small crew. Two camera setup. A real conversation in a room that felt like somewhere a musician would actually be. No staged emotion. No on-the-nose voiceover. Just the artist, the instrument, and the memory.

— 03 — The Shoot

The hardest part is staying out of the way.

We filmed 7 musicians in Minneapolis over a single day. The room did most of the work. Warm light, a few guitars on the wall, somewhere to sit and tell the truth. The artists picked up their guitars and started talking about being a kid. We rolled.

The hardest part of documentary work is staying out of the way. The easiest part is knowing when you've got it.

[ Quote from Ryan, Terry, or the FG4K team about the experience, the music, or what the program means to them. ]

— Ryan Smith - Soul Asylmn

— 04 — The Results

What the work did.

The #MyFirstGuitar series became part of FG4K's donor outreach, used across their channels to introduce supporters to the artists their giving makes possible. The series helped expand awareness through the 2025-2026 campaign and gave the FG4K team a library of stories they could keep returning to.