Croatia announced Alexandria as its FIFA World Cup 2026 base camp with a video we shot in two hours across three locations in Old Town. Here’s what that day actually looked like from behind the camera.
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A two hour window with no room for a reset
The Croatian ambassador to the US had two hours available, and the announcement had to be filmed across three separate locations in that window. There was no built-in buffer for a delay or a do-over, which meant the entire day had to run exactly to plan the first time. Visit Alexandria, the destination organization behind the announcement, has more on the city’s selection as a 2026 World Cup base camp.
No script, but very specific questions
This was never going to be a word-for-word scripted piece, that would have undercut exactly what made it worth watching. But an ambassador and a city CEO are both practiced, comfortable speakers who can talk for a long time if you let them, so the real preparation was building tight, specific prompts that would get real, usable answers without opening the door to a ten minute tangent we did not have time for.
Forty minutes of footage, a deadline that would not move
We came out of the shoot with about forty minutes of usable footage that needed to become a three minute video, and it had to be ready before the World Cup itself started. Narrowing footage down to the right statements normally takes weeks of back and forth between editors and a client. This one used AI to do a first pass against the key points we had already locked in during pre-production, turning weeks into a single day, then our editors took over to actually shape the story.
What made the Croatia FIFA World Cup announcement different
Most shoots have some flexibility somewhere in the schedule. This one had almost none, a fixed announcement date, a two hour speaker window, and three locations to cover in it. That combination is rare, and it’s exactly the kind of project that tests whether pre-production planning actually holds up in real time.
Planning a high-stakes shoot on a tight timeline?
See our full Croatia FIFA World Cup case study, or how we approach promotional video production for deadline-driven work.
