Social Media Reels for Huntington Park Businesses

The City of Huntington Park put on a Halloween event at Salt Lake Park. The Fern is an event space here and they did not host it. They set up a booth like everybody else.

That is the situation almost every local business is actually in. You pay for a table at a city event, a few thousand neighbors walk past you over one afternoon, some of them take a flyer, and by Monday there is nothing left to show for it.

So I filmed it. Ninety seconds. Kids in costumes, the pumpkin patch, the haunted tunnel, the raffle going on in front of the city's backdrop.

Notice what the reel is mostly about. It is about the neighborhood, not the business. The Fern is in it, their shirts and their sign and their booth, but they are not the subject. That is deliberate. Nobody shares an ad for your booth. People share the afternoon they took their kids to.

That is what a location page like this one is supposed to prove. Not that I will drive to Huntington Park. That I have worked here, at Salt Lake Park, on a city event, alongside people who live here.

This is client work, produced for The Fern and posted as a collaboration on both accounts.

On May 17 the City of Huntington Park closed Pacific Boulevard between Zoe and Saturn for the fifth annual Pacific Art Walk Festival, part of the city's 120th anniversary. The Fern had a booth. I filmed it.

What is in frame is the city itself. Danza Azteca dancers in full headdress moving down the middle of a boulevard with the crosswalk paint still showing. El Rey behind the tents. Kids painting at a folding table. That is footage you cannot stage and cannot buy.

Here is the part worth copying though. This reel is not only a recap. Partway through, the camera lands on the flyer on their table for a summer program running July 6 to 10, QR code and all, and the owner talks through what they had set up. Sensory play, a calming corner, a bilingual book library.

So one afternoon on Pacific Blvd produced community presence and a dated program announcement in the same ninety seconds. Most businesses treat those as two separate posts and the second one performs badly, because nobody shares an ad. Attached to a festival people actually attended, it travels.

That is also why this one runs long and has the owner talking instead of playing as a silent montage. At a street festival the interesting thing is not that you showed up. It is what you brought.

This is client work, produced for The Fern and posted as a collaboration.