Following a viral sensation, five years later.

The following article was written completely by a human film director who, over a period of one hour, poured himself into this story in the most cinematic way he could.

“The energy a school gives us is the energy you see on screen.”

Beside a hilly road heading west out of D.C., there are well-groomed horses grazing behind an elegant white wooden fence. The “horse school in McLean”, a daily passerby would think.

From the outside, The Madeira School looks like just that, a horse school. It’s a striking feature in a modern school to have horses. So striking it becomes the identity. I’m sure barely a century ago, horsewomanship was plainly expected of a cultured young woman in the USA.

At Madeira, the horseback riding program is well run with healthy endowment. As it happens…just like the rest of the school.

When you get to Madeira, it doesn’t take a detective to observe that this school is running well. Like an engine that’s been tuned to perfection, it’s obvious.

Madeira, as a school, knows who she is.

The girls carry a palpable “Madeira presence”. Like an invisible uniform hidden beneath their baggy, mostly red sweaters. They are unhurried and stable. They are engaged and courteous. They are welcoming and laugh a lot.

A determined and vigorous force of nature by the name of Lucy Madeira built the school and arranged an unbeatable plot of land for it. A hill perched on a bend on the Potomac River. Forested on all sides, the red brick buildings have an old fashioned, kind straightforwardness.

A ropes course with its own zip-line. A one-of-a-kind schedule. A snail for a mascot… a sense of humor. What a school, we thought.

Almost seven years ago, Alesi, Ahmed and I landed on Madeira’s shores, bright eyed and ready to knock it out of the park. We were a young company and had a name to build.

The mission, as always, was to approach a school with the beginner’s mind and emerge with a film two weeks later. It’s high-risk filmmaking. Typically, it is expected to have a plan. As John Lennon is often quoted saying, “Life happens when you’re busy making other plans.” We have a plan, but our plan is to figure it out. The story always tells itself.

Everywhere we turned, one of us would say “that’s cool.” Buildings, programs, interactions and a river view that transports to you to a simpler time. The students peppered us with questions.

From the very start, we were being electrically charged by the environment. This is what we at The Film Guys would consider excellent sailing conditions. Good flying weather. We will give everything we have to a film, but there’s nothing like getting it back from the school.

In no time, we found a piece of music that matched the energy we were feeling on campus, then spent five evenings working with a small group of students developing the sequence of scenes that would flow exactly with the music.

Alesi organizing our ideas onto her signature dry-erase board that all clients are asked to arrange prior to our arrival.

The management received our script with reserved excitement. There was confidence, but mostly there was curiosity. Would this film be as exciting as the script suggests?

Over the next ten days, the Madeira communications team dropped everything to make this project succeed. “Other duties as required” they would joke about their contracts. A host of unspecified missions that fall under the category of “work activities”. During our film production, here are 11 things that the Madeira Communications Team did:

Inflated mega pool floaties in our basement office
Prepared a school hallway to welcome a horse
Cleaned up after a horse had been in a classroom
Observed Shelly the snail falling out of a kayak into the school’s own “Black Pond”
Arranged and managed an all-school pool cinema night
Carried a school gnome which they subsequently planted throughout the video
Answered questions to many bystanders observing our production at Capitol Hill
Coaxed a fluffy husky to do her signature howl by playing a particular video
Transformed a common room into a beautiful slumber party with fairy lights in 15 minutes
Wore the snail mascot suit on a zipline because it would be a liability to have a student do it
Cleaned up the confetti from an iconic scene that could only be done in one take

The Snail fateful moments before the fall

What we got from the Madeira School was a full buy-in. From the faculty, staff and students, everybody was on board. What emerged was a video that expressed that energy. Our script is only as alive as the students who perform it.

Madeira Unexpected was a smashing success. It seemed to capture the spirit of The Madeira School just right. It became a hallmark identity piece for the school. In one video, Madeira went from “the horse school” to “the horse-in-the-classroom school”. This is a project that I appreciate as a home run.

It’s a project I am always happy to show to my friends and family when they ask me what I do. The film is as alive today as it was when it was released. It shows perfectly how effective the right film is for the identity of a school. This is what we internally call “peak Film Guys.”

Then in 2024, Madeira called us for round two. It’s always hard to follow a great success. Luckily for us, despite being a whole new generation, the Madeira Girls were still Madeira Girls.

Whether or not we succeeded at our mission, I leave to you, the reader, to decide.

Here are the two films we made. I hope it is plain to see how much pride we put into our work.

Madeira Unexpected [2019]

Madeira Unexpected [2024]