Smart Money Hawaii: two films and a website redesign for a mortgage lender

Smart Money Hawaii is a mortgage lender in Honolulu that helps veterans, active-duty service members and their families buy and refinance homes, including VA loans. It competes with national lenders that dominate search and a handful of local lenders. Its website was dated and hard to find, and it had no video that showed the people and the mission behind the service. The goal was a brand that felt trustworthy and personal, and a website that matched it.

• Pre-production. I wrote the interview plan for the owner, the manager, a production partner and the loan performers, with questions about culture, serving military families, and building trust. I set the camera plan: two angles per interview, high-key lighting, and subjects alternating left and right with eyes in the upper third. I built a shot list for the office day, from the exterior establishing shots to the front desk, team meetings and clients arriving.
• The main promo. A brand film for the website and social channels that introduces the team, the culture and the mission of serving military families.
• The veterans film. A second film built around real homebuyer families and the lender's advisors, for the website and social media.
• Search and competitor research. A full report comparing Smart Money with five competitors on search ranking, keywords, backlinks, paid ads and branded versus non-branded traffic, with a keyword plan to rank for the terms military homebuyers actually search.
• The website redesign. A new site with refinance and purchase paths, an eight-step process page, a payment calculator, advisor pages, client reviews and contact forms. It was built and reviewed on a private staging site, and the company never launched it.