Creating High-Quality Videos with Social Distancing

Ideas for creating high-quality videos without a full production crew

Lately, Zoom-style and stock-heavy videos are the new norm. Everyone has the power to create incredible video and photography with the equipment they carry in their pockets and purses every day. But having high quality equipment doesn’t mean the final product will look high quality.

Based on recent research from Klein & Partners, we know that consumers are still uncertain about getting too close to others. Patients are embracing the virtual visits offered to them today and many express a desire to continue virtual visits after the pandemic. Still, patients need to be informed about their options and why they should continue to seek care.

Video plays a critical role in reaching these audiences. It’s also an incredibly powerful approach to communicating a lot of information to internal teams. While organizations and marketers are working with what is available, there are some tools and tricks that can make video production — even remotely — far more high quality while staying safe.

Ways to increase video quality during quarantine

Have the support of a team of experts. Never underestimate the power of having a team behind you that understands the ins and outs of video production. Bringing people together who are experts in story development, lighting, sound, direction, art direction, animation and editing plays a critical role in the overall look, feel and story.

It’s true that having these experts working together elevates every project. But we know that isn’t always what every project requires, particularly these days. At Core, we work with you to scale our team and equipment based on your needs and budget.

Consider a scaled back or zero-crew production. Practicing social distancing is still incredibly important. So is getting messages out to your consumer. Our team can create a full crew, even with no one on set. Those who are critical to the production can patch in remotely to help guide a production with the quality you’d expect with a full crew on set. If you’d rather have someone handling all the details and direction, we can make arrangements to have one production crew member on set.

Elevate conference-style videos. The Zoom-style, multi-participant meetings that have popped up since the pandemic started are a great way to get information out to your audience, particularly on social channels. While the production level started out a little rough, we’ve seen some much-needed improvements.

With your existing equipment, we can help elevate these conference-call style videos to look and feel more polished – all done remotely from our location. As we plan together, we may recommend additional ways to increase the quality from the start. For example, that could include anything from microphone usage to lighting kits — all of which we can send to you. While approach to video production has ramped up during this period of social distancing, it can be a great tool moving forward for patient education, product and service updates, and even medical device instructional videos, all of which can be products for you to share on social media, on your website, via email, or other ways to best reach and engage with your target audiences.

Harness the power of a storyteller. Capturing your audience in a sea of media and competitors requires thoughtful storytelling. The most seamless stories are planned – idea into storyboard and into the final edit. Talented, versatile, and flexible storytellers can add significant value to a video, even after it's been recorded, to create a compelling narrative that accounts for audio, visuals, animations and more.

Video production safety precautions

Proceeding with the utmost safety is absolutely necessary. Just like the medical teams we work with, our video production team is taking every precaution to make sure patients, staff and crew stays safe and healthy.

Personal Protective Equipment: The use of PPE such as masks are to be used during the photography/video session except when talent is required to perform for the creation of the photograph/video which does not include a mask.

Social distancing / No touch: Crew members and talent should maintain social distancing, using no-touch posing methods when at all possible. The maximum crew size for a photography/video session of 10 or fewer persons is to be observed. Crew Members and talent will not carpool to the set. In cases where people may need to interact on screen, it is advised those people self-quarantine prior to shooting for 14 days so they are healthy while on set.

Temperature checks and screening questions: Any crew members and models who are sick are expected to stay home. Temperature checks will be conducted for each crew member and talent prior to each session. Any person with a fever exceeding 100.4 degrees shall be prohibited from participating in the session. Screening questions could include:

• How are you feeling?
• Have you had a cough or any flu-like or COVID symptoms in the last 14 days?
• Have you been around anyone exhibiting these symptoms with the last 14 days?
• Are you living with anyone who is sick or quarantined?

Adherence to sanitation protocols: Standard sanitation protocols prior to each session should include but not be limited to:

• Washing hands regularly before and after sessions.
• Avoid touching one’s face.
• Sanitation of all props, chairs, benches with which a crew and talent may come into contact.
• Sanitation of restroom/dressing facilities if available to talent on set or in studio.
• Sanitation of common areas, including doorknobs (interior and exterior), counter tops, pens and pencils, tablets and monitors.
• Any supplies with which talent interacts need to be cleaned on set (hard surfaces) with a cleaner, or quarantined ahead of time for 4 days (wardrobe for example should be purchased ahead of time and quarantined).
• Break rooms or other areas of the set should be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized, and not used for congregating by crew members and models.
• The producer will wipe down any surfaces the crew needs to touch; all surfaces that a model will touch will be cleaned before the model enters the scene

Embrace a new approach

While the pandemic has given us all a major shake-up in the way we work, it’s also given us the chance to think outside the box — to find and create unique solutions. We are approaching every project we work on with a new perspective. It can inspire us to create incredibly beautiful and clever creative work that reflects the unique brand position of the healthcare organization we partner with each day.

Contact us with any questions. Core Health works with you to scale each production to your needs. We can help support or guide you, if or when you need it.

Doug Birling is a Media Production Specialist at Core Health, Core Creative’s specialized healthcare marketing practice.