Capturing a Renaissance Man
  
Thank you for the hard work on the video for Aart's Lifetime Achievement presented to him at a large (1200 attendees) annual luncheon Award. It turned out fabulous. I got (and overheard) so many comments about how great it was from people at the event
— Yvette Huygen
Director, Worldwide PR & Corporate Affairs
Synopsys, Inc.
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Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNPS) is the world leader in electronic design automation (EDA), supplying the global electronics market with the software, intellectual property (IP) and services used in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Synopsys’ comprehensive, integrated portfolio of implementation, verification, IP, manufacturing and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) solutions helps address the key challenges designers and manufacturers face today, such as power and yield management, software-to-silicon verification and time-to-results. These technology-leading solutions help give Synopsys customers a competitive edge in bringing the best products to market quickly while reducing costs and schedule risk.
Situation
Dr. Aart de Geus Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer of Synopsys, is very active in the community, and is the chair of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG). When Dr. de Geus received the group's 2007 Spirit of Silicon Valley Lifetime Achievement Award, Synopsys needed a video to show at the awards ceremony. The award was to be publicly presented to him at a large (1200 attendees) annual luncheon at the San Jose Convention Center. Synopsys needed a short (5 minutes or less) video showing who Dr. de Geus is and how he exemplifies “business excellence, impeccable ethics, and community engagement.”
Creation Ground Media Spotlights and Engages
The audience were members of the SVLG, and leaders from more than 280 large high tech firms in Silicon Valley. The goal was to give the viewers a fresh appreciation for Dr. de Geus as renaissance man, innovator, and a treasure to the community.
The client provided the basic content, and a scriptwriter organized it to take advantage of multimedia's interaction of video, graphics, text, sounds, speech, music, and pacing.
The team decided to interview high level people who knew Dr. de Geus professionally and use their testimonial comments to drive the flow of ideas in the video. Among those interviewed were CEOs from Adobe, Applied Materials, and NetApp, the President and COO of Synopsys, the President and CEO of SVLG, a former mayor of San Jose, and Dr. de Geus's professor and mentor from graduate school.
Photos taken by Synopsys employees worldwide and family archives were combined to illustrate talking points and historical scenes. Instead of searching for commercial music Creation Ground Media used audio (and some visuals) from Dr. de Geus playing blues guitar and incorporated it into the beginning and end of the video.
Result
A successful video a) delivers a message, b) the audience can't take their eyes off of it, c) the audience doesn't forget it.
When we learned that the keynote speaker was Governor Schwarzenegger, and that our video was to immediately follow his presentation, we were worried when the lights dimmed after lunch that it would be difficult to capture and keep anyone's attention, especially in such a large audience. As it turned out, everybody was attentive to the video, even after the Governor's amazing keynote event. We decided it was time to watch our Terminator DVD. Again.
The video was also posted onto the Synopsys website, as well as YouTube.
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