Take Your Kid to Work Day

We ended this term with a great opportunity for another live event video – take your kid to work day. I have to admit that when I first thought about trying to film this, I was a little worried. My Dad was the parent taking me to work but most of the time my Dad has a very short commute. He works from home. Fortunately for me, he had an important meeting at a head office to try to get a new product listing.

Even though I was filming a live event and I didn’t know exactly every thing that was going to happen, like where we would have lunch, my dad gave me an overview of what would happen when we went to the head office for the meeting. This gave me the ability to plan my story using a storytelling diagram that we had learned about in class.  This is mine for our day:

The next step was to plan what shots I would use to tell the story. For this I used a Shooting Action Plan, just like what I used to make sure I got all of my shots of the fireworks show in my Live Event Video. This is the Shooting Action Plan:

I decided to build the rising action by merging my footage of our drive in to the meeting, the signing in and getting coffee into one continuous shot. Then I used a time-lapse shot of my Dad preparing his notes for the meeting to further build tension and move the story forward. When we went in for the meeting itself, I panned around the office to a freeze frame with some close-ups to give the viewer the sense of being on the other side of the desk for a major meeting. I got a great shot of a unicorn mask that someone had left in the office as a joke. This is one of the most fun things about filming a live event, and one of the most challenging – you never know what is going to happen!

Then we went to a competitors store to check out our products on the shelf. This gave me a great opportunity to get some more close up shots and some still shots to use effects on to add interest to the video.

Of course, what fun would a day at work be without a good lunch break! I included a shot of myself eating lunch. For this I had to set up and frame where I was going to be sitting so I could get footage of myself. Lots of editing to cut out the extra footage of me getting settled back in my chair.

One more store visit after lunch and we were back to the “office”, or our dining room table. I wanted to end the video with the interview of my Dad because I felt that his interview gave a natural conclusion to the video. It also provides a nice vantage of his “office” and gives a warm feel to the end of the video. And a little comic relief for those who are paying attention as our dog walks through in the background.

The biggest challenge I faced with this video was that due to corporate policies I was not allowed to film everything that I wanted to capture. I was surprised about what I really likes about this assignment. Going to work with my Dad. Let’s face it, getting to sit in on a meeting at the head office of a multi billion dollar corporation doesn’t sound like the most exciting day when you are 14. However, I really enjoyed all of the people I met and found that they had a great sense of humour and were actually a lot of fun. I think I have a better understanding of why my dad enjoys what he does for a living and I feel lucky to have had the chance to try to capture that with my video. I hope you enjoy it too.