Hello! My name is Casey Shaw, and I am a filmmaker based in New Orleans, LA.

Right now, there is a severe lack of sports media showcasing the true spirit of these events. We're left with commercialized and commodified experiences that diminish the beauty of the athletes' journeys towards greatness.

International sporting events have been a part of my life since before I was born. My parent's first official date was at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Closing Ceremony, and I was raised in Atlanta because my family moved there for my dad to work for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. I have attended twelve Olympic Games, four World University Games, and a FIFA Women's World Cup.

I began my film career by learning how to use a DSLR camera and shooting live music events after traveling to New Orleans for college to be a cross-country runner. Over the next seven years, I worked on over 100 sets in New Orleans, and a trend became clear. The artists in New Orleans were the most amazing talents I had ever met, yet when it came time for a big project, the key creatives were almost always flown in from big cities. I founded my company Shawscope to help correct that course, and we provide access to 35mm and 16mm resources and cameras to local Louisiana filmmakers to help them bridge that gap.

With my combined experience, I began to ask- what would an Olympics shot by folks from New Orleans and the South look like? What stories would be told differently?

Unseen Olympiad is the first step towards answering that question. We are working on building a pipeline to connect our artists to be able to shoot the Olympic Games.

Even the best athletes must train at smaller events before they reach the Olympics, and we are following the same model. We began with the events captured in Unseen Olympiad, the World University Games Winter and Summer, and we have now captured two Olympics (Paris and Milan) on real film, and have reached over 700,000 unique accounts on social media worldwide.

Our team has traveled to at least eight countries for this project so far, and we have screened the film in Italy as part of the Cultural Olympiad of the XXV Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games, with a former Olympic Silver Medalist in attendance for a post-screening discussion.

A contribution here is a contribution towards a greater movement of preserving the beauty of life through sport, telling untold and underrepresented stories, and providing access for the incredible filmmakers involved to connect to the world.

I am so grateful for your time and energy supporting our project, and seeing this unseen beauty unfold for many others.

Thank you.

Casey Shaw

Director, Unseen Olympiad