A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

My partner Monica and I incorporated Black Watch Productions on May 1, 1989. Almost exactly one month later, my younger brother David succumbed to the AIDS virus he’d been fighting for only a little over a year. Back then that wasn’t a fair fight, and the diagnosis was essentially a death sentence. What struck us was how little we knew about HIV/AIDS at that time, even though the disease had been raging since the early ‘80s.

Inspired by my brother’s tragedy our new company gravitated to what is now referred to as Cause Marketing. Our very first project was a PSA for the Dave Winfield Foundation’s internationally acclaimed bilingual substance abuse prevention program called "Turn it Around". With Director Roger Paradiso, Black Watch is able to do a lot with a little. Taking a small budget and putting it all on the screen, we raised the visibility of a fledgling worthy cause with creativity and teamwork, producing sophisticated messaging and production values.

Black Watch is a production services company, which at the time it was established was a radical departure from the specialized, director-driven commercial production company that was the norm. This concept—fitting freelance directors and specialized crews to each project—allows us to take on a wider range of work, delivering creative solutions through team building. We were able to escape niches as we took on an eclectic range of projects that included broadcast commercials, medical & pharma, kids & toys, food, lifestyle, tabletop and original children’s programming. But it is that early experience with Cause Marketing that ignited an interest-turned-passion that has run through everything we’ve done over our 30+ years in production.

A key concept we bring to our Cause Marketing projects is the importance of high production values. With the Williams Whittle Agency in Virginia, we produced at least two PSAs per year for the USO over a 10-year span, completely rebranding them in the process. Largely due to top level storytelling, great production values, and emotionally charged calls to action, our USO spots were awarded high-visibility primetime slots, allowing the USO to experience record levels of donations and a massive on-air media presence. Black Watch continues to produce high impact projects in the Cause Marketing space, including promos for Food Network’s documentary, *”Hunger Hits Home”: a pro bono mini-doc for the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee honoring the *“Foot Soldiers of Selma-Bloody Sunday” and their fight for voting rights; the inaugural PSA for *”The Mission Continues”, a nationwide post-deployment veterans support group; celebrity campaigns for Safe Kids and Feeding America. We We’ve most recently completed a global piece for UNICEF, and we continue to seek out ways to raise the visibility of small local groups like the *Newark Mentoring Movement and *Seton Hall University’s Economic Opportunity Fund.

But our deep-rooted passion and the reason we started down this road is the on-going fight to end the AIDS pandemic for good. Braking AIDS Ride benefitting Housing Works in NYC—fund raising, as Rider participants, and as videographers. Honoring my brother David and all our friends who passed in the early AIDS pandemic, we get on our bikes and behind the cameras, providing pro bono video services. With our footage we create recruitment films, *PSA’s and *social media content for Housing Works. In return, the hundreds of hours of footage we’ve collected is coming together as a feature length documentary, “And So We Ride”. Our goal is to get the remarkable stories we’ve recorded out into the world, while helping to raise the visibility of Housing Works and all they’ve accomplished for the New York LGBTQ+ and homeless communities.