101 MASS AVE, BOSTON

How do you market a space that doesn’t exist yet?

Boston Virtual Imaging partnered with Samuels & Associates to produce a series of marketing videos for 101 Mass Ave, an office and lab building being constructed on Parcel 12, one of Boston’s most ambitious mixed-use air rights developments in 40 years. This video was produced as a rough cut early in our partnership with Samuels & Associates. It was ultimately not published and evolved into smaller marketing videos targeted to specific prospective tenants. I have included this video in my portfolio, because I really like how this version turned out. 

The client’s need for this video campaign was to showcase the final constructed space, the anchoring retail plaza, and on-site hotel, as well as highlight the significance of its geographic location in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. The video would be used as a marketing tool to attract office and lab tenants to this location. The overall timeline for this project was three weeks. 

In order to tell this story, Boston Virtual Imaging worked closely with Samuels & Associates to understand the location and the target audience. We created 3D animations of the future development to help visualize it to prospective tenants. We then captured aerial footage of the site and surrounding area using a drone and from a helicopter. 3D animations were embedded into some of the aerial footage to visualize the master plan of the development. Candid pedestrian footage was captured throughout Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood to highlight the vibrancy of the neighborhood. 2D text graphics were animated to music to deliver information to the viewer.  

Although this video has never seen a public audience, I felt inclined to share it because of the combination of mediums that I was ultimately responsible for, and how it represented my relationship with the location. At the onset of this project, Boston Virtual Imaging had just finished producing a short documentary of Parcel 12 for a Space Spotlight event hosted by NAIOP MA. I had developed an intimate relationship with Parcel 12 after learning about how much planning, financial investment, engineering and construction it took just to break ground on the parcel. While working on this project, I thought; what would it feel like to experience 101 Mass Ave? What did it look like? What did it sound like? I really enjoyed working alongside BVI’s 3D artist by filming candid neighborhood footage and editing 2D text animations to a bold song in order to arrive at this specific version.