Minds Matter Southern California helps students from underserved communities navigate the path to college. Many come from families where higher education isn’t a given, and they navigate the process without the same financial or academic support available to many of their peers. The organization provides mentorship, academic resources and funding to help these students reach their goals. Keeping those resources available depends on consistent fundraising, which means reaching donors in a compelling way.
High-quality video production plays a major role in that effort, but outsourcing media creation takes money away from student support. This was especially true for their largest event yet: a fundraising gala hosted at NeueHouse Hollywood starring John Legend.
The team needed a way to create immersive visuals that carried the same impact as the stories they were meant to tell—and they needed to do it without spending a dime on production. Under the leadership of Tina and Bill Admans and with the help of a Dell Precision 5690 laptop powered by NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada, they found a way to make it happen.
Building an Experience That Puts Students at the Center
Minds Matter SoCal designed the event to bring their student’s journeys into focus. Instead of a traditional stage or slideshow, the venue showcased moving images of students opening acceptance letters, stepping onto college campuses and reflecting on the challenges they had overcome. The room became part of the story. It immersed attendees in the experiences that their donations made possible.
The technical requirements took careful planning. To bring life to the space, they needed to create a 5760×1080 ultra-wide video and synchronize three cinema projectors across the walls of the historic Hollywood site. A single frame of this high-quality, ultra-wide video could max out most memory cards and they needed to cut together an entire hour of footage. A Dell Precision 5690 laptop with NVIDIA accelerated computing seamlessly cut footage using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.
By using the NVIDIA Ada architecture, the team doubled the speed of single-precision FP32 operations, significantly enhancing their graphics and renderings.
Producing everything in-house offered full control over the final product. A willingness to learn, empowered by AI-driven workflows, kept costs down so every moment on- and off-screen reflected the students’ real experiences.
Storytelling on a Deadline: How AI Laptops Saved the Night
The Minds Matter gala was successful, but a major fundraising campaign was about to launch. The night before it went live, Bill Admans realized something was missing.
“Tina said, ‘I wish we had a video for this,’ and then she went to bed.” Admans recalled. “There was no time to hire anyone, so I sat down at my Dell Precision 5690 laptop and got to work.”
With no voiceover artist on hand, Admans used Artlist.io to generate narration that felt natural and reflected the voices of the students Minds Matter SoCal serves. The background music wasn’t quite long enough, so he stretched it using an AI-assisted tool in Adobe Premiere Pro. ChatGPT helped refine the script, adjusting the tone to make sure it landed the right way.
By the time the sun came up, the video was done.
“What would have taken weeks was finished in three hours,” Admans said. “I had everything I needed on that laptop. No lag, no slowdowns, no delays. I could stay focused on telling the story instead of fighting the technology.”
Scaling Student Impact with Smart Investments
Minds Matter SoCal is expanding its mentorship model by growing from a six-year program to a seven-year program. This change allows the organization to continue supporting students through high school, collegiate admissions, all the way through college completion and into their careers.
By handling media production in-house with a Dell Precision 5690 laptop powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing, Minds Matter SoCal has been able to expand its reach without increasing costs. The savings from high-quality, in-house content creation directly supports more mentorship, scholarships and opportunities for students working toward their collegiate goals. Every dollar that would have been spent on outsourcing production is reinvested into the students. So, they receive the guidance and resources needed to navigate one of the most important transitions of their lives.
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