By Carley Wyse

My first year working for FiveCore Media allowed me to improve on my production skills by leaps and bounds. After the summer break I was ready to jump into my second year and take on some more responsibility. With that being said, when Kyle told me that I would be taking the lead on big project of IU Health, I was a bit nervous but eager to take on the challenge! For this project FiveCore was contracted to make a 12 minute and 6 minute internal video promoting the hospital’s lean management operating system. It was quite the challenge to complete for my first lead on a project, but I enjoyed learning so much! For this blog post I am going to tell you the top 5 things that I learned on this project!

1. You can never over do it on the Pre-production

This was the first project that I was a part of from pre-production all the way to post-production. I learned that you can never spend too much time on pre-production work for a project. We started by meeting with the head of the Office of Transformation at the hospital to get a good feel for what she wanted as a customer. I then researched similar videos to decide what kind of a look I wanted for the video before I ever picked up a camera. This helped me decide what kind of b-roll I wanted to capture for the project.

2. Keeping rigorous notes will change your life

First I obviously kept a notebook with all my Pre-Production information which was great to refer to while on a shoots and also during post when I was editing. But I also found that having all interviewers names and positions written down in one place was critical to staying organized. By the time this project was over I had chicken scratch written all over my notebook that I am sure only I could understand!

3. You can never be too organized!

Once again my notebook kept me on track! But I would also keep all the information for my shoots in my notebook, on my phone, and in my personal computer. It was nice to be able to access this information from virtually anywhere because the worst thing that could ever happen as a production manager is to show up late or not at all for a scheduled shoot!! I also wanted to stay as organized as possible when editing together my six different interviews with their six corresponding b-roll’s!

4. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!

This project taught me that if you try to be in control of every detail you are going to miss something! So instead, I would put someone in charge of sound, someone in charge of the camera, and someone in charge of questioning the interviewee! This allowed everyone to put their full attention towards that one task so everything was done to the highest quality possible. This also allowed me to just focus on what the interviewer was saying and get a feel for the person which allowed for an easier edit in post!

5. Get other people to help you edit.

After watching this video 20-plus times for who knows how many hours, it was easy to get caught up in the small details and not see the big picture. It was a huge help to have other FiveCore members look over my videos and give outside input. An extra set of editing eyes is always a good thing.

This project was a challenge but I really enjoyed being a part of the production process from start to finish! I can’t wait to take the lead on other projects!