Bill Michie

When we announced our topics for this course, I had grand visions for the video component of this project. I envisioned beautiful sweeping shots of families and construction workers.  Sunrises over skyscrapers with inspirational music resulting in an emotional connection to safety. During week one, I was already writing my acceptance speech for best short safety film. However, this week I realized that I couldn’t afford Martin Scorsese to direct my film and I had to re-evaluate my plans. I decided to make a quick and simple training video on 5 safety tips to remind workers how and why to work safely.

Design Approach
I had to do some research before starting my storyboard.  What were the five safety tips I was going to share with our employees?  To figure that out, I made a list of 7-8 tips and met with our Safety Director, Steve Brennan, who you met in my audio story.  With his direction and feedback, I set to work on my storyboard.

This part of the project was really fun (who doesn’t like to draw?).  I designed my film to follow an instructional flow.  I knew I’d need a lot of title screens so I made sure to include those on my storyboard. I then drew the sequences as I imagined them in my mind.  I made sure to apply lessons learned from our readings about shot selection – so I drew different close ups and detail shots.

After taking a break, I reviewed the storyboard one more time to make sure I was on track. My second pass revealed ideas I didn’t think would work so I made further changes. At this time, I also established a base for timing.  I knew I had 3 minutes and 6-7 sections, so I divided up the time equally.

Check out my storyboard below.

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Design Execution
I began executing my design by creating a list of shots I needed.  Since the majority of my scenes take place on active construction sites, I had to plan ahead and reserve time with superintendents and project managers. I also had to pre-plan still photography I would need to incorporate. Once I secured my shoot schedule I began creating my graphics and titles based on my storyboard.

I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create my graphics and titles.  I absolutely love how integrated the Creative Suite is – revisions to my graphics were updated immediately in Premiere. I also decided to use content created previously in this course as branding elements in the film which integrated seamlessly.

Since I had all my graphics done prior to shooting any video, I chose to build a structure for my film first in Premiere. I placed them all into my timeline to create a 3-minute guide.  This approach helped me determine how much video I had to shoot.  It also provided a guide for my narrative, which I admittedly completed as my last step.

Finally it was time to film!  I shot all my video and still photographs onsite with my iPhone. Again, the storyboard was crucial to the success of my filming.  When onsite, I was able to pull this out and explain to my “cast” exactly what I was looking for.  This part of the project was really fun and allowed me to collaborate and work with individuals at my company I’m not usually exposed to.  In total, I spent a little more than 4 hours shooting video around various job-sites.

Once I had all my segments filmed and photographs taken, I got back to work in Premiere.  Since I already had my framework established (graphics and titles), I had to create 6 21-second segments for each safety tip and introduction.  I accomplished this by importing my videos and dragging them to the timeline.

Our professor made a post that touched on editing burnout – wow; that was accurate.  I estimate I spent a total of 15 hours editing this 3-minute video and still have work to do.  As I worked through each segment I seemed to get better and better with the software but I also became more and more critical. Edit, watch, edit, watch – it was a vicious cycle. The crazy thing is, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Next Steps
The next steps for this project include adding background music and redoing my voice-overs. As I mentioned before I left this until last, which was a bad idea.  Ideally I would love to get someone with a great construction voice to record these, however I’ve called in a bunch of favors already for this film.  I also intend to add transitions to my video and graphics.

Take a look at my draft video above and let me know what you think!