Fox in the Snow Brand Video — Columbus, Ohio Video Production Case Study | Actuality Media
Fox in the Snow is one of the most beloved cafe names in Columbus. What started as a single corner shop has grown into multiple locations across central Ohio, each with the same warm, welcoming feel that turns first-time visitors into regulars. When they hit their 10-year anniversary, our team at Actuality Media had the chance to help tell that story through our videography.
This project came to us through Cara Zale, a consulting agency that works with Fox in the Snow. Their brief was unusual and a lot of fun; the video had to be a surprise.
Cara Zale was helping the Fox in the Snow team organize a celebration marking the owners’ 10 years in business. They wanted a brand film that captured the full decade of work, showing the people, the places, and the everyday moments that have added up to a great cafe culture. The challenge was that they pull it off without the owners catching on.
The video served two purposes: Internally, it would be a gift from the team to the owners, a way of saying thank you for ten years of building something worth being part of. Externally, it would live on the website, so regulars, new customers, and the broader Columbus community could see the story behind the cafes they love. For a beloved local brand, it was a chance to deepen that connection with their audience in a way a traditional ad never could.
For this video, we filmed at four different Fox in the Snow locations:
Each cafe has its own personality, and we wanted the final video to feel that. Moving between these four locations gave the edit a variety of moods to work with and gave viewers a real sense of how far the Fox in the Snow footprint has grown across central Ohio.
Like any good Columbus coffee shop, Fox in the Snow is often busy. Customers were coming in during every shoot, and closing the cafes down to film wasn’t an option. As many already know, videography can take up a lot of space sometimes (equipment + crew). Rather than wrestle with a full studio rig, we leaned into a light and nimble approach:
The cafes themselves did a lot of the heavy lifting. Warm wood, natural light, and the rhythm of a real working cafe are hard to fake. We made sure to stay out of customers’ way, and let the everyday energy of each location live inside the frame.
The heart of this video wasn’t the cafes. It was the people. We interviewed staff from across the brand’s entire ten-year arc. Team members who have been with Fox in the Snow for years, along with newer hires who are just starting to understand what makes the place tick. Each perspective added another layer to the story of how Fox in the Snow grew from humble beginnings.
One important directorial choice: we framed the interview setup so that each person was speaking directly to the camera, almost like they were talking directly to the viewer. It made the piece more personal, more emotional, and more honest than a standard corporate-style brand film. In videography, small details like these can make a massive difference in the impact it has on viewers.
Post-production is where four locations, dozens of b-roll shots, and a roomful of interviews had to line up into a single coherent story. We worked closely in collaboration with Cara Zale to find the right rhythm and tone.
The final video lands at about three minutes. Long enough to give the story room to breathe, short enough to keep every beat landing. One of our favorite touches came in the titles. Rather than dropping a flat logo reveal at the end, we built a custom animation that plays off the Fox in the Snow name itself: a fox hopping out of a pile of snow and it reveals the “10 years” text as the fox falls back down to the ground and out of the frame. We debated whether it was too on-the-nose. In the end, we shipped it, and the client loved it. It gave the video a distinctly Fox in the Snow feel that a generic endcard never would have. That's the power of using videography over static images.
The owners of Fox in the Snow saw the finished video as planned, and the response was exactly what everyone hoped for. The piece captured a decade of work, relationships, and growth in a way that felt authentic to the brand, and it gave Fox in the Snow a piece of content strong enough to share with their entire community of customers across Columbus and central Ohio.
Actuality Media is a videography agency based in Columbus, Ohio, helping brands across central Ohio tell their story on video.
