Author: Nate Brown | Chief Creative Officer
What are your team's biggest questions?
We've been through a whirlwind few months as humans, colleagues, business leaders. I'm speaking collectively, because I bet you may be feeling the same way! Through it all, we've been communicating, easing fears, answering questions and charting the future. How about you?
Speaking of charting the future, as states begin reopening, you may be thinking through when and how to welcome employees back to your space. Whether your workforce went all virtual, or remained open as an essential service, the workplace today looks very different than before. As you ease your team into the next phase of reopening -- whatever that may be for your company, consider using video to show your team how you are keeping them safe, and what they can expect at work. Start by answering your team's biggest questions. For our team, it was questions around how do we get back to filming workplace stories, in a safe and socially distant manner. How do we protect our clients, and our team? To address this, we carefully followed the film industry protocols, and developed a plan. I created this video to provide an overview of changes to our production process, and welcome our team back to filming. Use this recipe to create your own communication plan!![]()
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Author: Abby Cheesman | Co-Founder
In times of rapid change, viral illnesses like COVID-19, natural disasters or other disruptions to our daily business and personal lives, our teams look to us to provide guidance, critical information and direction to move forward.
You may have a lot of information to share with your team right now. New processes, office closure, working remotely for the first time. Sharing this in written form is important for step-by-step processes that people can refer back to. But in written communication, it's often the emotion and vulnerability that gets lost. Now more than ever, employees are looking for connection. They are looking to leaders who care and empathize with what's happening. Tone, demeanor and eye contact matter. If you can't be together in person to speak with them, video is the next best thing. As leaders, delivering a message on video is a human-centered way to connect, inform, reassure our people. This was a hard week. In that spirit, we took a few moments to open lines of communication with the team before our weekly check in. Here's the message we sent to our team and close partners.Here's our "recipe" for creating this video message.You can download that recipe here!![]()
Author: Nick Hill | Lead Producer ESTIMATED READ TIME | 4 MIN 37 SECONDS Due to the current state of the world, you now find yourself turning that spare room, typically reserved for that bowflex you now use as a clothing line, into your work-from-home office. It can all be quite an adjustment and navigating how one gets started with remote work can be overwhelming. That’s where our NORMAL, day-to-day workflow experience can help. We've been working remotely for awhile now. And, have had some time to tweak our remote work set ups. In this post, We share a short list of microphones and cameras you can use to get started in your new role as master Skype-setter-uper. Most of our laptops, tablets and some All-in-one PC’s come with a built in webcam and an array of mics that we can use as a jumping off point but it isn’t a bad idea to up your game and the quality of at least one of these two if not both. As someone in film and audio, my first recommendation would be to improve your audio. For one reason or another, most people can get past a subpar video clip so long as the audio is crisp and clean. To most humans, crap audio is a massive distraction (the expert studies are still out). So let’s start with microphones. A USB mic is a typically a huge upgrade for most of us who do a lot of virtual meetings, calls and conferencing. The list of affordable options is endless and most will end up being a huge upgrade AND most if not all will work on both PC, Mac and even iOS at times (with a small adapter). For Good AudioAudio Technica AT2020USB+
Rode NT-USB Mini
Yeti by Blue
For Good VideoLogitech - C920S HD
Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000
These choices are by no means a definitive list of what one should be using and keep in mind, there are so many options out there. We feel this will be a great jumping off point and of course, don’t forget, at the very least, utilize the devices you have already ie your phone, tablet, and laptop. We are lucky to be surrounded by technology that makes it quite easy to see and hear one another, no matter the distance between us.
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Skill Scout TeamEverything film, storytelling and human-centered workplace coming at you from Elena, Abby, and our brilliant teammates. Archives
June 2020
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