Services Provided:

• Production Lead

• Project Management

• Director

• Communication Strategy

• Process Improvement

• Content Creation

• Editing/Motion GFX

• Producer

Challenge

In Fall of 2023, the media team at University of Washington partnered with the College of Arts and Sciences to create a series of videos with 4 of their instructors, each with a very different subject matter and personality. The team needed to work with the instructors to shoot, edit and produce all videos before the end of year.

Unlike typical course work, a learning designer was not assigned to this, leaving storyboarding and creative vision to our team. While the notion of creative freedom is exciting, it can also be daunting if clear goals aren’t defined first. We were also a newer team and clear roles hadn’t been assigned as this was considered an all hands on deck approach.

Further, the instructors themselves needed to finish their scripts before we could then meet with them to move forward on storyboarding. The delivery of the scripts kept needing to be pushed out as this coincided with the first week back to the fall school semester where their time was fleeting.

Idea

Our team began to meet on a weekly ongoing basis throughout the duration of this project. We began pre-production on what could be controlled, such as design and overall concept from what we could sense of each unique personality we’d be working with. With so many moving pieces, one thing was clear:

communication needed to be established throughout the lifecycle of this project both internally and externally, and further shared between the two.

With this in mind, I assumed the role of production lead, producer, and communication strategist; helping the team align on creative visions and execution strategies for capturing content and gathering necessary equipment needed. I then communicated any needs to instructors. This helped to establish a rhythm and collaboration.

As we got further in the project, I setup recurring storyboard meetings to review storyboards and any rough cuts, as a few of the videos needed to be storyboarded after capturing. Each of us as team members then were responsible for working with each of the instructors individually on edits for their course. I took on the editing and animation for a really fun course on Scandinavian poetry, taught by Lauren Poyer who brought great enthusiasm to the subject.

As our team moved forward in various cycles of the project, (some were already shot and being finalized, while others were just getting started on the edit), I wanted to ensure we kept the flow of communication going and had a clear way to know where each member of the team was at. With this in mind, I implemented an e-mail template system which would be used to communicate any benchmarks in the project (i.e. narrative cut complete, shoot complete, etc.)

Result

Through having these clear communication systems in place, this allowed for the team to 1) have a sense of where each other were at in the process and 2) allow for greater collaboration through the transparency.

We also were able to complete the project on time and on budget, as I handed off the project to the client just before the New Year, to which they were delighted. As a result, there has been positive feedback around the work the team completed and the team is now hearing from additional programs within the University that are interested in partnering on similar content. This content is not live yet and the full courses cannot be shared, however, below are a few video clips from the Scandinavian course I completed design, editing and animation work for as well as filming and directing.

Above is an example of one of the communications I sent out to our instructor around filming. It included the storyboard, agenda, filming locations pinned on a map to coincide with the schedule and the design palette to give a sense of wardrobe.

Above and below, our instructor Nicole is seen speaking around campus. As seen below, I orchestrated and captured the final shot with a drone over UW’s iconic Drumheller Fountain.

Below are some previews of the animations and compositing I completed for the Scandinavian poetry course. Much of this course was spoken in Old Norse and Lauren wanted to bring attention to things like alliteration within the text so it was important to show this on screen.