Smith+Nephew Design Team Video Challenge

A few months ago, I challenged my design team to make a short film about themselves. As we are increasingly tasked with creating videos for our jobs, I saw this exercise as essential to all of our growth and development. It was not an easy task to put on them considering all our day-to-day deadlines, but there were a few reasons I decided to push them in this direction. 

First, I wanted everyone on the team to understand and work within the same video editing software. For us, I decided on Premiere Pro.

Second, I saw an opportunity for our team to learn to tell better stories. This exercise included creating mood boards and storyboards to present a few weeks before the project was due. This to me was a very important part of the process because I really wanted the team to be able to articulate their vision for the short film.

Lastly, I believe that if you can go through the (very) uncomfortable process of telling your own story, you will be in a much better place to help others tell theirs. 

As a people leader, I don’t believe in asking those who report to you to go through anything that you wouldn’t go through yourself. So yes, I also assigned this project to myself. If you’re interested, have a look at my short film where I talk a bit about my experience as an artist, musician and hopeful online cooking show co-host.

The interviews and much of the B-roll was graciously shot by the already extremely busy Stefanie Rawlinson. Thank you, Stefanie, for taking time out of your schedule and for always supporting my crazy ideas.