Paravel Insights teamed up with Golden director Saman Kesh on the first national spot for ACE Scholarships titled “Make It Possible,” a campaign built around a simple idea: every child has the potential to do something extraordinary, and access to educational opportunity can help make that future possible. The spot captures that wonder of possibility, imagining kids’ futures — astronaut, engineer, violinist — through a child’s eyes, with puppeted pencils along for the ride. Golden helped bring the campaign to life with a hero anthem spot and a series of character-driven :30s.
“Saman is a magician at building unexpected, imaginative worlds full of high-energy wonder,” said Matthew Marquis, Managing Director at Golden. “This campaign asked what a kid really dreams their future looks like, and Saman knew exactly how to answer it: a pink-lit spaceship, a lovable robot and a pencil with a personality.”
For Kesh, that meant leaning all the way into kid logic. “We channeled our inner child and kept that kid logic in everything,” he said. “Everyone at NASA chewing bubblegum while walking to the spaceship. Pink lights, even though there’d never be pink lights in a spaceship. A ridiculous but adorable robot, kind of like a grown-up Wall-E. It was fun to bridge my adult point of view and make a kid’s world.”
Rather than add the pencils in post, the team puppeted them on set, giving young stars Caleb, Legend and Matty real characters to play off. “Kids have brilliant imaginations, you give them ideas and they go to town,” Kesh said. “On set we had to personify the pencils and give them a personality so the kids had something to react to. I had to meet them at their level. Puppeting gives a kooky, playful energy that feels right for kid logic. We knew it would be a challenge, and it exceeded our expectations.”
Oren Soffer served as director of photography, taking in all of Kesh’s “Keshisms” and executing them, along with Kesh’s longtime line producer Nicole Powell produced for Golden.
