A Journey Begins

The elearning team at Skills Tasmania want a novel approach to presenting elearning innovations projects at their end-of-the-year showcase. They also had a major problem in the schedule, in that they might only have 30 minutes for 12 presentations! We talked through a few ideas with them and came up with the idea of short videos about each of the innovations projects.

But time was running out. All 12 videos, from planning through shooting and editing, had to be completed in around five weeks. Since this was already a busy month, Sam Johnstone came on board full time during this time to help out.

Planning

With the fast turnaround, there wasn’t a lot of time to plan out each of the videos in detail. We worked with Skills Tasmania to develop a collaborative process aimed at reducing the risk of Skills Tasmania not getting what they wanted from the videos. We sat down with the team and talked through and documented what needed to be featured in each of the projects, and developed a set of standard questions that would be asked during each interview. With the short timeframe, we all needed to be clear about the process and the outcomes.

We used Basecamp extensively while working with Skills Tasmania on this project. This meant we could keep track of the approval, changes, and discussions easily and quickly. The team at Skills Tasmania used Basecamp during the project as well. It was great to have reference points for each video’s status.

The shoots

We travelled all over Tasmania doing the interviews. We met some amazing people! Someone from Skills Tasmania came along to all the interviews, to get a sense of what was happening. Often the team members were interested in talking about different aspects of their innovation projects from what Skills Tasmania were excited about. During these visits, we also got the cutaway shots and screen recordings. As Robin was off doing the interviews, Sam was back in the office starting to edit the video and working on the mood boards.

The mood boards

We were really worried about the video just being talking heads and images of people using a computer ... which is not very engaging for 20 minutes during a conference. To solve this, we gave each video a different mood through the visual design and motion graphics. To develop the look and feel, we designed mood boards for each of the videos. This was as a chance for us to talk through how we were going to approach the video. Once we were happy with a mood board, these were shared with Skills Tasmania using Basecamp, and they gave us their feedback and input. Getting this input and approval for the visual design at this stage saved us all a lot of time later.

The rough cuts

Back in the office, we got the first rough cut of the video completed and sent off to Skills Tasmania ASAP. These edits focused on the audio and weaving the stories about the projects throughout the interviews.

Developing the final versions

Each of the 12 videos was at a different stage of completion for most of the

project, which was stressful! By this stage we knew that Skills Tasmania were generally happy with what we were planning for the look and feel, and they were happy with the content. We then did all the motion graphics and animation and refined the edits. Last but not least, we did the colour correction and audio post-production.

The showcasing day

For the showcasing day, we played the high-definition video on a laptop. We got to the venue early, tested everything, and crossed our fingers. It was all going well until two-thirds of way through, when video started to miss frames and jump around. It righted itself, but we could have done without the hassle. Even with all the testing and planning in the world, things can still go wrong. On the day, the audience and the teams were excited about see the projects presented in such a visually concise way. The innovation teams were especially excited about not having to give talks!