Behind the Scenes of The Olympic Club Video: What Makes it so Good?

When you find out you were selected to produce a brand anthem video for the Olympic Club in San Francisco, there's this moment where it hits you—this is a club that's hosted multiple U.S. Opens, has been around since 1860, and has a member roster that reads like a who's who of American business and culture. It is truly one of our country's most iconic clubs and all of a sudden the stakes feel different.

Steve Mulholland, our Creative Director, was my guest on the Crushing Club Marketing podcast, and we talked through what went into producing their video.

The conversation revealed something worth emphasizing: when you're creating a piece that represents your club's identity to prospective members, the distance between "someone with a camera" and "someone who can capture what your club actually means" is wider than most people realize.

Setting the Production Schedule

Steve's first call when we won the project was to lock in three days of filming. For a four-minute video, that might seem excessive. Most people unfamiliar with production might assume you can knock something like this out in a day, maybe two at the most.

"Things take time if you want to do them right," Steve said when I asked him about it. The Olympic Club has two distinct locations—a historic city clubhouse built in 1911 in downtown San Francisco, and three golf courses out on the Pacific Ocean. That geography alone requires time. But more than that, capturing the feeling of a place—what it actually means to be a member there—takes time and attention to detail.

Steve talked about the process of discovery that happens when you're filming. The fact that you're seeing spaces for the first time, noticing details members might take for granted. That fresh perspective is valuable, but only if you give yourself time to find it. When the video becomes the first impression for viewers, those details matter.

Managing the Interviews

Trying to determine how many interviews need to be conducted is where things get interesting. The club wanted to include multiple voices—members who could speak to different aspects of club life. Steve's recommendation? Four people maximum for a four-minute piece.

"It's kind of like simple math," he explained. "Imagine if you have ten voices in a two-minute piece. How are you going to construct a story? It's going to be disjointed."

They settled on the GM, the assistant athletic director, and two members—all skewing younger, which made sense given the club's demographic shift. What made it work was that each person could articulate something specific. The GM spoke to history and tradition. The members conveyed what it actually feels like to be part of the community. The athletic director brought operational context.

Four voices, each earning their place in the narrative. More than that and you start forgetting who said what. The piece bloats. The message dilutes. And when your video is representing 160 years of club history, clarity becomes essential.

Making Video Production Personal

Steve's been using this interview technique for twenty years—having subjects look directly into the camera lens while seeing the interviewer's reflection. It's not the traditional off-axis setup you see in most corporate videos.

"It's extremely engaging," Steve said. "They're speaking right to the viewer."
But there's a second camera too, positioned off-axis. This gives them options in the edit—cutting between angles to tighten sound bites without jump cuts. More importantly, it creates visual variety. The “A” camera feels direct and intimate. The “B” camera feels more observational, almost voyeuristic.

If you're not technical, just remember this—both cameras matter. The lighting setup for each interview took real time. The framing required thought about what story each shot was telling beyond just the words being spoken. These production values signal something to prospects—this club takes itself seriously enough to invest in how it presents itself. 

Unapologetic Music Tracks

When I first saw the rough cut with music, I remember thinking the music was fantastic, almost triumphant. It was big, both in sound and in emotion. But that's exactly Steve's philosophy.

"Don't sell your project short," he said. "If you're trying to craft your video the right way and putting focus on making it look as good as it possibly can, don't sell it short. Pick music that's really going to help elevate it."

He's talking about selecting music you might initially think is too grandiose, too dramatic for a membership video. But if your visuals can hold up—if your interviews look amazing, if your B-roll has movement and intention—that music lifts everything. The message rises with it.

The alternative is settling for safe corporate background music that signals to viewers this is "just another club video." That signal happens subconsciously, but it happens. For a club like the Olympic Club, there was no compromise on the music. It had to feel cinematic.

Movement Creates Engagement

Almost every shot in the Olympic Club piece has movement. Walking through the city clubhouse with a gimbal. Driving along the golf course with the camera mounted on a cart. Slow-motion footage of members in the fitness center, at the pool, on the range.

That constant motion keeps your brain engaged. It mirrors how you'd actually experience these spaces if you were touring the club. Static beauty shots have their place, but movement tells a better story about what it feels like to be there.
The gimbal work in the city clubhouse pool—this gorgeous Italian tile space with marble columns that goes up two stories—that footage alone required thought about camera movement, lighting angles, time of day. Those decisions compound into something that feels dramatic rather than documentary. And that cinematic quality becomes part of how the Olympic Club positions itself against peer clubs.

Details of Professional Production

Steve works closely with our editor whom he's trusted for decades. They don't spend weeks in audio mixing like we once did in network television production, but there's still significant attention paid to how music hits with specific shots, where transitions happen between different music cues, making sure interview audio is clean and balanced.

"We like to use music to signal a change in message," Steve explained. "If it's a different section of the video, we want to start with a new piece of music. It helps pace the piece."

One piece of music over four minutes starts to feel long. Two or three cuts of music over that same span makes the piece feel like it's moving forward, building toward something.

These are details most viewers never consciously notice. But they feel the difference between a video that holds their attention and one they click away from after thirty seconds.

What This Means for Your Club's Positioning

There's no shortage of talented videographers today. Equipment that was prohibitively expensive ten years ago is now accessible to consumers. Drones, gimbals, editing software—the technical barriers to producing video are gone.
What hasn't changed is the aesthetic judgment required to pull all those elements together into something that accurately represents what your club stands for. Knowing which four people to interview instead of eight. Understanding when music should change to signal a shift. Recognizing that movement matters more than static beauty. And, as I like to say, editing brutally. Understanding what absolutely has to stay and what can, and probably should, be edited.

The Olympic Club video works because every decision—from interview setup to music selection to how long they spent in that city clubhouse pool—was made with intention. That level of craftsmanship doesn't come from just knowing how to operate a camera. It's art, and it comes from understanding how all the pieces work together to create a feeling viewers remember long after they've forgotten the specific details.

When you're positioning your club to attract the next generation of members while honoring the legacy members who've built the institution, that distinction matters. The video becomes an extension of everything else you've invested in—the facilities, the programming, the culture. It either reinforces that investment or undermines it.

Your club has a story worth telling. Tell it well.