A bearded man in a cap and black hoodie stands behind rows of vinyl records inside a warmly lit record store.

Dillon Smith | Discogs

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[ the problem ]

Discogs came to us looking for a story that reflected what their platform actually means to the people who use it.

We helped them shape a narrative from the ground up. Alongside the Discogs team, we worked to identify a story partner that made sense for the piece. After a pre-interview with Dillon, we knew we found our guy.

Soon after, we found ourselves traveling to Charlotte, North Carolina for a two-day shoot. Because this story was rooted in the appreciation of vintage, physical media, we decided to bring along a Hi8 camera in addition to our usual Sony FX6 setup. When Dillon invited us into his home and showed us his music room, we knew we could make our vision come to life.

[ our solution ]

We spent two days filming inside the world he'd built, learning more about his life, passion, and deep love for music. Our thorough preparation, along with a little adaptability, allowed us to follow new threads of story as they appeared along the way. This approach helped us uncover some of our favorite moments from the piece, like Dillon discovering a drawing his son, Noble, tucked into an album cover. It was important to us that we show how Dillon's relationship with music traverses his whole life, and this scene provided that in a way we could have never written ourselves.

When we got back to the office and started going through the footage from the shoot, we encountered a new hurdle: How do we represent Dillon’s childhood memories without any archival media? We decided to film reenactment footage with the same Hi8 camera we used in the initial shoot. It ended up giving the film warmth and character that archival photos alone wouldn’t have carried.

The result was a short documentary following Dillon's journey from a kid who would spend his $5 allowance on records, to a record store owner who, through adversity, is still open today.

We didn't stop at the doc. The campaign included a suite of short-form cutdowns, built for social, to drive traffic back to the anchor video months after release. The library of photos we captured were designed to be used across advertising material, pitch decks, and Discogs' official website.

Within the first seven days, the film hit 30,000 views on YouTube, and the comments proved that a real, human story connects with an audience more than anything.