FeedNC Training Videos
A look into the process
The Problem
FeedNC is an organization located in Mooresville, NC that started off as Mooresville Soup Kitchen but has grown into so much more than a soup kitchen. They serve approximately 150 guests a day, have over 450 regular volunteers, and offer many services beyond just a hot meal: a culinary education program, a food pantry, food delivery, and more. With so many programs and volunteers it's difficult to train everyone in person, and the quality of a volunteer often times depends on how well they understand their role.
The Process
My task was to solve this problem. After talking with the team and learning more about their problem, we decided that it would make sense to make a training video for each of the four departments that volunteers work in: Culinary, Operations, Pantry, and Food Movers. New volunteers would receive the video that corresponded to their department after they signed up to volunteer. These would be short (roughly 5 minutes) and wouldn't replace the entire training process. Instead, the videos would give volunteers an overview of all the positions in a department and how they worked together. Volunteers could have any further questions answered in person.
As with any other client, I work through a pre-defined process to create the final product.
Script
The script's purpose is to clarify what the videos will look like and will need to include. This means that oftentimes the final video doesn't follow the script word for word, but having a script allows me to make sure that the final product matches what the client expects.
For FeedNC, each department head wrote their own portion, and I edited it and clarified when necessary. This is an important point: the script was written by FeedNC with my direction and guidance. This is the reason that this step is so critical, as it requires the people who know the positions the best to write down everything that's important, which I then clarify. When the script is finalized, we move on to filming.
Filming
When filming it's essential to consider the best time. This can mean timing filming to a specific event, when specific volunteers were in, and when interviewees were most comfortable speaking. Generally, all these things don't happen in the same 8-hour window, so I like the flexibility of shooting over multiple days.
The most important part of filming is filming the interviews. I like to shoot my hero interviews first–these are the interviews that we scripted for previously and will tell the bulk of the story. Before the interview, I take our script and condense it down into questions that I'll ask the interviewee. Each person is different, so how I approach each interview is different. Some people are very comfortable on camera which means that we can jump straight into the topic, while others need to warm up a bit before we start on the hard questions. Knowing this, I approach each interview individually and like to take my time and have maximum flexibility. The interview progresses like a conversation that I guide using the script. The goal isn't to reproduce the script in video form, instead, it’s to have the interview subjects express the topics from the script in their own words. I use the script to make sure that all topics are covered during our interview. This yields a more natural flow to the videos than if the subjects were reading lines, and often leads to new ways of expressing certain topics.
After the interviews are the background shots or B-Roll. These are videos that play while the interview subject is speaking in the final video, and should match up with what the interview subject is talking about. Finally, I capture any auxiliary interviews that I feel will add clarity to the video. For the FeedNC project, this meant I needed to talk to volunteers about their experience.
Designing
Design is a stage that starts during the scriptwriting stage and continues through the editing stage and can vary widely for different projects. For the FeedNC Training videos, I was considering that I would need to have text on the screen giving details about the volunteer positions, I'd need text introducing interview subjects, and I'd need title screens for each video. All of these graphics needed to match FeedNC branding and energy. I played with several ideas and settled on using the dark green and rust red of the FeedNC logo to make the different elements pop out. I choose a speckled texture style because I thought it represented the work ethic and grit that the FeedNC team brought every day to their job. I also designed and illustrated an image for each video that could be animated on the title screen, which conveyed the energy and a bit of playfulness that each team member expressed.
The Result
The final product was four videos, one for each department (Culinary, Operations, Pantry, and Food Movers) and optimized for YouTube. With each video, I included a thumbnail, a suggested title, and a suggested description. These are elements I like to include for all of my clients to make their job easier and are based on my experiences running my own YouTube channel. Each video was meant to be self-contained and short so that they could be easily digested. They provide basic training for each role and could serve the secondary purpose of introducing people to all the jobs that FeedNC does.
