Last year On Q Media had the opportunity to work with Blank Financial in collaboration with our friends at Team 7.
The project involved conducting a series of interviews with the staff, designed to be displayed on the company’s website. This would be more engaging than simply having static headshot and instead helped to showcase each team member’s personality in the most authentic and fun way possible.
PRE-PRODUCTION
Prior to the shoot day, it was important to determine timings. With multiple interviews being conducted, we needed to work out how long it would take to do the initial setup, followed by how long each interview would take to capture.
In these situations you’re always working under the clock. You want to make sure the client has a good experience on the day and one of the best ways to do this is ensuring you’re not wasting their time.
When it comes to planning, having significant prior experience allows you to make sensible calls on how much time you’ll need- adding a little bit of buffer but not too much. Whatever the case, you want to make sure you’re always under-promising and over-delivering.
The location for these interviews was down at Studio M in Mornington. Having filmed here before also gave us the confidence to know the environment and what we equipment we needed to bring. Therefore for this project no location scout was necessary.
Finally, we needed to prepare the questions with the team at Blank Financial to ensure we had a broad range of questions and responses from each staff member that we could then cut between in editing.
PRODUCTION
When it comes to the production day, we always aim to arrive on set well before the client shows up if possible. This allows us to ensure our game plan is solid and if it does require any changes, we can work on solutions prior to them arriving.
On our production day with Blank, our main question was around where to film the interviews. In the past we’d used the white cyclorama as a backdrop but on the day, we also had the option for a darker backdrop which had been set up for another shoot.
Given Jimmy (from Team 7) was taking photos using the white cyc and then also taking into account the Blank team’s outfits (which were either complimentarily dark or bright), we realised the darker backdrop would allow us to work more efficiently while also providing a unique look.
One of the factors we had to work around was the natural light in the space. Much like most spaces in Melbourne, the studio has an open design which means natural light enters through the ceiling. Knowing this, we brought a large black solid on a frame to fly above the entire setup. While this didn’t cover the backdrop, it allowed us to maintain control on the subjects themselves to a greater degree.
Throughout the day, the lighting changed as expected and we saw slight variations amongst interviews. However, this was much less drastic thanks to the overhead frame.
We also filmed the interviews with two cameras to cut between later in post production. This allowed us to hide the cuts more seamlessly if needed but also increase the visual interest- especially because there was no additional footage or images to cut to.
Finally, we used an overhead microphone which we much prefer for both sound quality and also reducing distractions in the frame.
Maybe if Blank preferred to be more on-trend, we could’ve used a fork with a transmitter attached to it but thankfully they were a little more sensible!
Overall, the day went really well. Jimmy was able to capture all the staff photos beforehand and we could begin our interviews on time. The only real challenge we faced besides the natural light was keeping ambient sounds to a minimum, including the other staff members talking. We eventually decided to move anyone who was waiting away from the main space which helped.
POST-PRODUCTION
In editing, one of the biggest challenges with these kinds of projects is organisation.
You’re working with 8 different staff members, with 3 deliverables each including a horizontal and vertical cut, plus one with subtitles burnt-in. This means 24 different timelines to manage!
As you can imagine, this can get complicated fairly quickly, so we always have our systems in place to ensure changes are managed effectively and we also work as efficiently as possible.
In this case it meant starting with the interview syncing and colour matching between cameras, followed by working on the horizontal cut, getting approval and then creating the other two deliverables from that final cut.
We also had a situation where we needed to conduct some ADR on one of the interviews, which involved meeting one of the staff members at a later time at their office. We used the same microphone to ensure a similar sound signature and then did our best to match the environment. However, I must say, it’s never the same!
Over a series of weeks, we slowly whittled down the deliverables and provided them all to Blank who were able to utilise them as required.
WRAP-UP
Jobs like these may sound simple on the surface but deceptively so. While we do our best to ensure the client doesn’t bear any of the complexity, as you can see, there are always many moving parts that need to be managed.
At the same time, the investment into these projects is often well worth it. While easy enough to film a video on your phone these days, the level of organisation and expertise required to pull this project off builds another level or trust.
For your customers, it shows a dedication to high standards- something that’s likely to be present in your actual product. Additionally for your staff, it’s a signifier they’re apart of a company that cares about presentation. This also trickles down to their approach and the amount of pride they have for their job.
Overall, we couldn’t be happier with how this one turned out! You can watch Bernard’s final interviews below:
