Two Sides of the Same Mission: How The Courtside Group Captures All of T Bar M Camps

T Bar M has never been a single story. At its core, it’s a summer camp — five programs built for kids and families, all pointed at the same mission: Love God, Love Others. And behind every one of those weeks is a coaching staff of college students who give up their summers to lead campers through what they call the best week of the year. Telling T Bar M’s story well means telling both sides of it, and telling them in ways that don’t sound like the same video twice. Over two brand films and a growing partnership, The Courtside Group has done exactly that: one film built to show families what camp actually feels like once campers are there, and a second built to recruit the coaches who make it run.

One Partner, Two Different Stories

The first brand film Courtside made for T Bar M was built to help recruit summer staff. How do you get college students to choose a summer of camp over an internship or a summer at home? The answer was a recruiting film that treated T Bar M's coaches as the subject, not the backdrop: unscripted testimonials paired with cinematic footage that captured what it actually feels like to be a coach there.

The second film flips the lens. Where the first told the story of the people who help make camp go, the newest film tells the story of T Bar M itself, its programs, traditions, and the impact on campers once they arrive. Same camp, same mission, but a completely different film, built for a different audience and a different goal.

"We love the strategy that they put behind their storytelling. It really captures who we are and what we want to present to the public. This most recent video is kind of a complicated thing to do because we have five different camps that all have different personalities. They’re able to capture those programs and put them in a story where we can share it with our families."
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— Janna Kelsey, Sr. Marketing Director, T Bar M Camps

That's the range Courtside brings to this partnership. It's not one template applied twice. It's proof that Courtside can walk into the same organization and find two distinct, impactful stories worth telling, then build each one from scratch to fit its purpose.

Adapting to Camp, Not the Other Way Around

Filming during camp means filming on camp's terms. Across four days and two locations, the crew ran a mix of true run-and-gun coverage and sit-down interviews, adjusting shot lists on the fly, catching moments as they happened rather than staging them, and finding the best possible footage inside each camp’s schedule. As Courtside founder Kyle Fenner put it, T Bar M's five camps all have different personalities, and folding day camp, overnight camps, and family camp into one cohesive film in just four days is no small logistical lift.

That adaptability shows up behind the camera as much as in the final cut. Courtside also shot a behind-the-scenes piece capturing the making of the camps film, giving T Bar M and Courtside's own audience a look at what it takes to produce authentic content in a live camp environment.

“Courtside brings strategy and high effort, equipment, and people that we know we can rely on.”

— Kenley Harden, Creative Media Specialist, T Bar M Camps

Why Courtside Keeps Coming Back

The honest answer is that T Bar M's purpose makes this an easy partnership. This is an organization built around the impact it has on the campers who show up every summer and the coaches who give their summers to make it happen. Their mission comes through in every shoot; from the way staff talk about their camp experience and the way campers talk about camp being the best part of their year. Courtside's job on both films was less about inventing a story and more about getting close enough to it to capture what was already true.

A Partnership Built to Grow

Two brand films in, T Bar M and Courtside have proven the partnership can flex to whatever the organization needs told next; recruiting one summer, camp programs the next, and a behind-the-scenes story in between. That versatility is the point: T Bar M doesn't have to choose which part of its story gets the professional treatment, because Courtside has shown it can capture all of it on location, on camp's schedule, without losing what makes each piece feel true.

Work With Us

If your organization has more than one story worth telling, whether that's the people behind it or the experience it creates, Courtside can help you tell each one honestly and well. Reach out to start the conversation.