Creativity Inspired Series: Production During COVID-19
COVID-19 has changed the way we engage with our colleagues and clients, and adds new challenges to video and photography productions. It has also enabled inventive and new ways of creating as we move from the physical to the virtual world. With social distancing, it’s become nearly impossible to schedule in-person shoots. But we have options. How do we move forward with print and video productions safely?
At P&P we asked a panel of industry experts, “How do we continue to produce during COVID-19 and better support patients, clients, and our agency? We (virtually) hosted them during our Creativity Inspired Series. They discussed ways to create content that feels fresh through video, photography, user-generated content, and animation.
VIDEO & PHOTOGRAPHY
Stock video and photography can be an easy way to gather existing professionally shot footage to pull through your brand. If you’re struggling to find the correct stock footage, then a virtual shoot may better suit your brand’s needs.
Virtual shoots allow us to create new content remotely and most importantly, safely. Internationally recognized photographer, director, and author Chris Crisman says the only safe production process is through a contactless shoot. “When we made this picture, there was no contact, only one person in the room at a time.”
Some of these shoots may be within an individual’s home. With this in mind, the transition from their daily routine to a shoot needs to feel seamless. In addition to staying safe, we want the individual we’re shooting or interviewing to feel comfortable. “Our challenge is to make things as easy as possible for our patients, our clients, and the agency. We use equipment they have and equipment we have,” says Rimaz Kaleel, Associate Director of Video Content at Link9.
USER-GENERATED CONTENT (UGC)
“Social is for connecting with people the way they want to be connected — authentically,” says Patrick Lupinski, VP, Associate Creative Director of Social at Patients & Purpose. “Content needs to come off as real and relatable, so there’s a need for UGC during this time.” This type of content may come from an individual’s own social properties or through a brand’s social channels via comments. The content can be shared from brand ambassadors or influencers.
A way to add more authenticity to these collected UGC moments is to add in additional stills and footage. “These are used to augment what the creative team has come up with,” says Susan Nickerson, Founder of Nickerson Research, a company that researches and clears specialized content for video, stills, and audio.
ANIMATION
If your brand is looking for options beyond video and photography, and looking to avoid searching through footage, then your brand may want to consider creating an animation. These animations can be 2D or 3D, whatever works best for your brand. “We have definitely seen an uptick in people asking about animation because we don’t have to acquire any of that footage. We have to design it and create it from scratch,” says Neal Cohen, Executive Producer at Flavor.
While COVID-19 continues to change the world, we are actively changing the way we shoot in order to preserve the safety of our patients and our clients. Through the use of video, photography, user-generated content, and animation, we reach patients when they need us most.
A special thanks to our Creativity Inspired panel:
Chris Crisman, Chris Crisman Photography
Susan Nickerson, Founder of Nickerson Research
Neal Cohen, Executive Producer at Flavor
Rimaz Kaleel, Associate Director of Video Content at Link9
Patrick Lupinski, VP, Associate Creative Director of Social at Patients & Purpose
