In Their Own Words

Open Door Mission, a Houston nonprofit changing lives every day, gave us two days and almost total creative freedom for a pair of donor-focused films. There was only a short window for pre-production, and no fixed script waiting for us.

We set out to avoid the typical addiction-to-recovery arc and dug into each person’s own unexpected journey instead — the quiet moments of hope, humor and humanity that don’t usually make the cut.

Open Door Mission gave us almost total creative freedom, and that trust shaped everything in these films.

— Open Door Mission leadership

A small, nimble crew filmed and edited two distinct films in under a week, working fast because the trust we’d been given meant there wasn’t a committee to route decisions through.

Both films are used in donor communications, giving supporters a version of recovery that doesn’t lean on the usual before-and-after shape — something closer to how the people who lived it actually tell the story.

Start something like this