Building Moments
of Magic
Fifteen thousand hours. That is what researchers estimate it takes to achieve mastery of a stringed instrument. Fifteen thousand hours of repetition, correction, and incremental progress before you can walk onto a stage and create moments of magic that transform an audience's perspective on sound.
But that moment of magic won't take place if no one is there to hear it. So how do we take this difficult, thorny, technical, but beautiful world and invite more people in, grab more attention, transform their impression of classical music so that classical music can transform them?
The Schoenfeld International String Competition, named for the legendary teaching sisters Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld, was building something new in China. A young competition with serious ambitions, it needed a way to communicate its value to the global classical music community.
vividlab• results guided a visual emphasis on networks
definite•, the ideas and execution creative studio, was brought in to help the competition establish its identity on the global stage. The brief was clear: show the world why this competition matters. Not through promotional language or institutional boasting, but through the people who had already answered that question with their presence.
The format let audiences meet these musicians as individuals, follow their journeys, and become invested in their outcomes.
It transformed passive viewers into engaged witnesses.
definite• understood that the most persuasive evidence of value is investment. These musicians, some of the most talented young string players in the world, had already decided this competition was worth their time. Worth their preparation. Worth traveling across continents to participate. The question was not whether the competition had value, but how to let that value speak for itself.
We found our answer in portraiture. Rather than a single promotional film, definite• proposed a series of short episodes, each following a different participant through the competition. The format let audiences meet these musicians as individuals, follow their journeys, and become invested in their outcomes. It transformed passive viewers into engaged witnesses.
Lead Video Director Kyle Johnson conducted interviews designed to surface the musicians' own reasons for being there. Using his experience guiding non-professional speakers toward authentic expression, Johnson helped each participant articulate what this moment meant to them. Their answers were concise, specific, and impossible to manufacture.
The visual language served a dual purpose. Interview setups were designed to showcase the extraordinary architecture that the host city had contributed to the event, framing each musician within spaces that communicated civic investment and institutional ambition. Behind the scenes footage of preparation and rehearsal gave texture to the dedication that statistics alone cannot convey.
vividlab• results guided a visual emphasis on networks
The score drew from classical instrumentation, building threads of tension and resolution that mirrored both the competitive stakes and the collaborative spirit. Musical phrases echoed the structure of the narratives themselves: individual voices finding their place within a larger composition.
vividlab• results guided a visual emphasis on networks
The series premiered during the competition and continued to circulate within classical music communities afterward. It accomplished something rare: making the case for an institution by getting out of the way and letting the people who believed in it explain why.
The musicians made it easy. They knew exactly why they were there. We just helped them say it.
"There's something special about projects where your job is just to point the camera at remarkable people and not mess it up," says Johnson. "The coordination across cultures and languages was genuinely complex. But the musicians made it easy. They knew exactly why they were there. We just helped them say it."
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