video camera boom mic
Corporate Training Video Production – Behind the scenes
I thought it might be interest for some of my readers to get a behind the scenes view of a recent video production project I have recently completed for a well know High Street Bakery brand.
What was the video for?
The video forms an integral part of a classroom based, customer services training program. The video has been produced as a DVD with 5 chapters presenting a specific set of customer service scenarios.
Sous Productions were commissioned by our old friends Training For Advancement (TFA). They were responsible for developing the overall training program and they called on me to take care of the video element. Having worked with TFA before it is always nice to be invited back in.
Pre Production
Some aspects of the pre production were a little tricky due to the very tigtht timescales and the client needing to make changes to the scenes and the script right up to the point the rec button on the video camera was pressed.
I knew the client wanted maybe 4 to 6 actors but I was not given the final character briefs until 4 working days prior to the shoot so there was no time for auditions of any kind which leaves you a little nervous about the quality of the actors leading up to point they deliver the lines.
As I didn’t know any agencies in that area I found an online site called CastingCallPro http://www.uk.castingcallpro.com/welcome.php enabling me to search and communicate directly with the actors I shortlisted.
From the initial brief I felt fairly comfortable this was going to be a 1 day shoot but until the brief is finalised you can’t be absolutely sure.
The client of course said well that’s fine, if we have to shoot on a 2nd day we will keep the shop and staff available. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that easily. The crew and actors need to be booked in advance for the days you want them. If you ask for an actor to be available for 2 days you can’t then send them away after 1 day without paying them for the 2nd. Vice versa, you can’t book them for 1 day and expect them to be available for a 2nd follow on day.
We settled for one day and so we had to make it work.
Crew & Location
I also knew from the guide brief that this was not a 1 man job so I could at least sort out my crew of one cameraman – Ian, and one sound man – Andy, in advance. Leaving me to take the role of producer.
Ian is one of those very relaxed but highly professional cameramen. He pretty much works with the camera all day everyday in a whole host of locations and typically for TV so I knew he would be great for the job.
Andy is a young lad but with a very mature head on his shoulders. He had a range of experience and while he might not be considered a specialist soundman I knew he would be able to handle the situation we would be in.
Sound is tricky at the best of times and we were going to contend with a noisy City roadside location so I wanted to ensure I had someone focused on the audio side only. The job needed to be shot on location in Liverpool due to the shop they wanted us to use and would consist of 3 locations.
- Pavement / walkway leading up to the bakery shop
- Inside the bakery shop
- Next to and inside car near to the shop
Equipment
The kit list for the job was fairly simple although my main debate had been about whether to take one or two cameras. Budget allowed me two smaller cameras such as the Sony PD170 or 1 higher quality camera such as the Sony DSR570.
I conferred with Ian the cameraman and decided on doing the shoot using one camera and filming each scene from 3 or 4 different locations one after the other. Yes, it takes longer and there is always the risk of continuity issues each time you run the scene through but we felt we had all day and the scenes were fairly straight forward.
There were some other unknowns such as lighting conditions in the shop so we could not be sure on what lighting we would need so of course we took more than we might need.
Eventual kit list:
- Sony DSR570 camera, tripod and Wide lens etc
- 9″ monitor and a wireless monitor
- 2 x Wireless Mics, 1x Boom mic and 4 way mixer
- 4 bank videssence and 4 x redheads for the lighting
I would be very interested to hear your views on crew and kit list for this job and how you would have gone about it.
Production Day Home to Liverpool is about 4 hours away so we were put up over night enabling us to arrive on location earlier and fresh to go.
The actress due to be the shop sales assistant was the only person giving me concern in advance simply because of the odd way she said things in text and email. When she arrived I found her very nervous and the minor script changes the day before didn’t help the situation. (alarm 1)
The other actors, 2 female and a male all went down the road for a coffee and to go through their lines together but the 1st actress decided she wasn’t going to join them. (alarm 2)
While we were setting everything up, the client came to me and said they were not happy with the 1st actress (the one I already had a few concerns over). She clearly wasn’t the same age as in the pictures she provided on line (alarm 3) and so she wasn’t quite the fit to the brief they had provided. Eek! Not a lot I can do about that now!
We concluded that we would give her a go and see how it went. At this point I noticed she was writing some of her lines on to her hand. (alarm 4) For a person acting as a member of the serving staff at the counter, ink all over her hand was not going to work – This simply added to our concerns and we had to tell her she would not be using her in the speaking part agrees but none the less we would pay her for the full day at the rate agreed.
This really didn’t go down well and she started to have a few rants. Within the hour, she walked off and we never saw her again.
Despite all that I had left Ian and Andy to do their stuff and they were ready to get the shoot underway. The weather was forecast to be at its best in the morning so it made sense to do the outside scenes 1st.
Scene 1 & 5 were much the same and involved walking down the pavement outside the various shop frontages and ending up outside the client shop. We planned on 3 different camera positions:
- Head on to actresses walking down the pavement with camera tracking backwards
- Fixed low angle shot outside shop
- Long panning shot from across the road through passing traffic
We had to handle all the usual issues of vehicle reversing alarms, work crew digging up the road and a variety of passing public who would suddenly behave a little strange once they realised a camera was around. You ever had them?
The actresses were pretty good and pretty much new their lines. I suppose in the end we had to run through the scene 3 or 4 times from each of the 3 positions before we got it right.
We then moved to our next outside location for scene 3 which was centred on the customer and her boyfriend getting in to his car and discussing the poor customer experience. Once again the road noise and general traffic was an issue causing a few delays and we had a bit of a problem shooting through the windscreen due to the sun and reflections despite the use of the polarising filter. In the end we couldn’t get the results we wanted so we ditched the idea.
Other than the environmental factors, everything else was fine and the two actors worked well together and we soon had the scene wrapped up.
Lastly, we moved inside the shop for the final 2 scenes. This is a real working shop (although it had been closed to the public – much to their annoyance). The staff had produced all the normal range of amazing products from baguettes to pasties and cream cakes. I don’t know about you but when I am working on a shoot like this I completely loose my appetite so however good the food looked I didn’t have the urge to dive in.
There were 2 scenes to do in the shop. The shop is quite limited for space so it was a little tricky to get all of us and equipment in the same space.
We shot the each of the two scenes from 3 angles and had to run through 4 or 5 time to get right, mostly due to continuity issues.
The actress who was supposed to be the sales assistant was replaced by one of the staff on site and she was absolutely fantastic! Having never seen the script before, she picked it up really quickly and her performance was very professional. A great deal of thanks go to her for stepping in and doing a great job with no notice.
We mopped up with a few cut away shots and few close ups such as shots in to the till etc and that was it, we were done.
The client was very relieved to know we had finished. She explained she had been nervous it couldn’t all be done in the course of 1 day.
The client made our day by saying we could take whatever we could carry. Anything we couldn’t take would be going in the bin so it had to be bag full of cream cakes to take home.
All we had left to do was the small issue of the 4 hour journey home!
On reflection, the day went really well. The end client and my point of contact at TFA were all realy supportive and professional. Other than the one that walked away, I thought the actors were very good. We took just the right equipment and my crew were as splendid as ever.
Next – Post production work and publishing the DVD which I will describe in another article with a link to the video.
About the Author
Duncan is the owner of Sous Productions which is a video production business based in the South of the UK. Duncan has been involved in producing, filming and editing corporate video for around 6 years. In addition to training video, Duncan also believes video on-line, to help companies promote their products and services on their web site is the next big thing and has already working in this area. Contact Duncan via the web site http://www.sousproductions.com
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