Services Provided:

• Set Design

• Leadership/direction of large team on set

• Camera OP/Rigging for highly technical equipment

• Strategic Communication

• Process & Workflow

• Content Creation

• Editing of complex multicam shoots

• Project Management

Challenge

Working in the 11 sound stages in Carpinteria, CA at LinkedIn Learning has been a real highlight of my working career. I learned a host of skills throughout my tenure there from initially joining as a Sr. Video Editor on the Creative team for a year before moving over to the Live Action team as a Director for 4 years. Each production had unique challenges and, though I’ve lost track of how many courses I directed before leaving in 2020, the challenges were often centered around:

• Directing large groups (upwards of 10-12+) during scenarios and larger scale projects
• Crew management and ensuring all roles were filled
• Communicating clearly across multiple channels when information was quickly being shared
• Creating a vision and action plan from loose and abstract concepts or ideas

Below are some examples of projects where I was faced with some or all of these challenges.

Idea

Many of the courses I directed relied heavily on the principle of, “Show, don’t tell.” For these instances, we hired actors and actresses to come and play roles which would illustrate the leaning objective the instructor would reference during their course. This meant casting, creating call sheets, and managing crews of 10-12+ people at a time.

Communication was key, as was having a clear vision and plan of how to successfully capture what was needed on a finite timeline, often a day or even a half day.

Result

To address this challenge, I created a custom call sheet template for our team which outlined the roles, goals and timeframe of the day in order to achieve the desired results. Going a step further, I added a storyboard to the call sheet outlining when each shot would take place and where, which allowed for us to capture multiple shots at a single location, even if they were not for the same video in the series.

This allowed us to produce faster and remain efficient in our use of time and resources through the remainder of these shoots. Here is an example of that in action.

Set Design

Below a few samplings of the courses I’ve directed and created the set design for. I collaborated with a producer, lighting and grip team, audio and other members of the live action team to create execute on the creative vision. This was determined based on the 1) audience 2) content 3) scenarios in the course 4) graphics involved so all colors were uniform throughout.

Scenarios

The above scenearios were written to take place in an eyeglasses shop, showing how to de-escalate interaction in a customer service facing role. This informed the visual design. I worked with the live action facilities manager and lighting/grip team to execute the build out of a full set to look like a modern retail space. I added imagery on the walls and eyeglasses from the dollar store to really sell the feel of being in an eyeglasses shop without the large price tag.

Challenge

Fast forward to March, 2020. We probably all know where we were at this point and what we were doing. Little did we know, the world was about to change and go into a state of uncertainty for an extended amount of time. Being that the live action team at LinkedIn relied upon ALL of its production occurring on site, we knew we had to 1) grieve what the hell was happening and b) pivot…and FAST!!!

Idea

After sitting through a handful of remote-directed shoots, asking instructions to stack books to make their cell phone cameras eye height and LOADS of frustration, our team pivoted in a big way.

We looked to a US-based video rental agency to start employing kits, of which we chose the necessary parts for every shoot (camera, tripod, basic lighting and audio) and modified from there based on the needs of each individual shoot.

We also created a series of training videos on how to setup each piece of equipment particular to each shoot which would be shared prior to our tech setup days with the instructor remotely. Gone were the days of having instructors show up on a curated set, instead, we were faced with the challenging task of meeting an instructor first-time via a video call and then previewing a walk-through location scout of their homes to determine the best shooting area. We would ask preliminary questions to get to help determine the best location, such as:

• Are there any noisy areas of your home we should avoid?
• Is this an area we can leave the equipment setup without disturbance to your everyday life?
• Which direction do your windows face?
• Is your room hardwood or carpeted? (carpets and rugs were best for sound dampening)
• Will you have help setting up the gear?
• And probably the biggest question of them all…..what is your internet speed? This would determine how soon we could upload and spot-check footage on a given day as well as how we can anticipate our teleprompter to behave over certain internet speeds which, in turn, can affect performance

Result

Because our team was able to pivot quickly, we were able to resume recording courses and creating content for the LinkedIn Learning platform. This allowed all other teams to continue operating as expected, since live action generally represented the first step in the production process. From there, editing, graphics, audio and quality assurance teams were able to keep pushing forward on the remote content our team had captured. To this day, the team still leverages remote recording for many of their courses because of the success of this model.

Original schematic detailing the remote live action overview process created by Scott Erickson.