Max Gilberg
Director
GOAL
Donda Academy is a K-12 private school founded by hip-hop artist Kanye West. During the 2021-22 school year, Kanye gathered a star-studded group of high school basketball athletes to play for his team Donda. This roster was made up of nearly all four and five star ranked players, including Kentucky commit Rob Dillingham and Memphis commit JJ Taylor. During this season, I worked with Ye and his team to deliver a number of hype highlight videos to help promote the team on Kanye's and Donda Academy's social pages.
Process
While working with the team I filmed on location in Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The goal for these videos was to create revolutionary content that was built to go viral across online platforms and further market Donda's team along with their players. Filming these games was unlike anything else I had ever seen before in the high school basketball world. Games where Kanye would be in attendance would attract thousands of fans and pack the gyms to full capacity leading to an amazing game atmosphere for the videos.
OUTCOME
Over the course of the 2021-22 season I directed 4 videos for the team that would be posted to both Kanye and Donda Academy's instagram accounts. The videos racked up millions of views, were reshared by thousands of fan accounts, and successfully spread the word that Kanye had brought his creativity to a new field, that being high school basketball. My favorite video was undoubtedly the LA homecoming video, which featured a 3d intro that replaced the Hollywood sign with Donda and replaced the top of the U.S. Bank Building with the Donda logo.
