I've taken a lot of flak for coming down so hard on Catherine's attempt at video production. But the fact is that video safety training is serious business and those who think they can get into the video production field without a lot of effort are kidding themselves. I've seen (and repaired) dozens of amateur production attempts over the past 29 years and I have seen people suffer near misses, injuries and death because the video training was totally inept.

It's not that I don't want safety trainers to use video media. It's that I want you to use it correctly, in a serious and disciplined manner. Treat it the way you treat your health and safety information. If SafetyXChange readers or their companies cannot take the time to get it right, use a professional. (I can offer some advice on choosing one, if you like.) Watch out for the "home movie" pro-sumer who spends his/her weekends dabbling with a camera and editing system. It isn't the equipment that makes the production; it's the content and preparation. The research and script stage are 75% of the work. The rest is mechanical. Owning a car does not make you a race car driver!

Why You Need an Expert

Before I offer some tips, I want to point out a couple of important things that will probably impact Canadians more than people in the United States.

1. Poorly produced videos can be dangerous and result in injuries and death because the training lacked clarity or miscommunicated - a safety issue.
2. The average professional has spent 4 to 8 years learning to use the medium effectively, before applying that knowledge to safety topics.
3. If you don't get it right and someone does get injured, or killed, Bill C45 will take over. Are you or your boss willing to go to jail because you didn't get the video done properly? (Kingston penitentiary isn't very nice, even in the summer.)

3 Tips for the Do-It-Yourselfer

That said, here are some tips to help get you going:

TIP #1: Choose the safety topic carefully.

Not everything you think is a great safety topic is video friendly. (Including notice board arrangement.) Some things are best communicated with a memo, or a still photo. (Like notice board arrangement.) This one can cost your company a lot of money, because it isn't just your time that's going into it. Everyone who views it is being paid to be there.

Note to Catherine: If you had taken your topic to a professional, you would have been told to use 2 still pictures. The first one would have been a picture of a poorly organized bulletin board with the words "Poorly organized" written on it. The second would have been a picture of a properly organized bulletin board with the words "Properly organized" written on it. Old Chinese proverb: 1 picture is worth a thousand words. It also saves much time and effort.

Personally, I have turned down a lot of projects because they were not right for video. You really have to think this one through and have your peers scrutinize your reasons for selecting a topic. ANY topic.

TIP #2: Never use talking heads to deliver safety information.

On-camera performances, in particular individuals that employees know, distract from the message and create a judgmental atmosphere. The viewers are distracted by their judgments of the personality, clothing, hair styles and other attributes of the person they are looking at and lose sight of the factual content. Also, wardrobe dates your production, particularly, if the "talking head" is a female.

In a well-produced video, the viewer is locked to the content, not the person delivering it. By the way, this rule does not apply to a short message from the plant manager or president designed to show that the guy at the top really cares about the people on the shop floor, because that isn't a safety issue.

For you Canadians out there, a video with a voice-over is less costly to translate into French than one with personalities that have to be replaced with another actor, or someone from the St. Laurent office. Remember, the language laws in Quebec require all training to be done in French.

TIP #3. A training video should never exceed 12 minutes in length.

To obtain 85% retention, your video should not exceed the time between commercials on network television. You can be sure that your viewers are conditioned to network sitcoms, action and reality shows where the time between commercials is 12 minutes, on average. I notice that advice given by SafetyXChange allows you a wide 20 minute window. That's "old school" and comes from the days when CRTC regulations required 20 minutes between commercials on network TV. (Pre-1985 in Canada. Pre-1980 in the USA.)

Conclusion

There you go. Three simple tips that will get you started. When you've got these figured out, I'll give you some tips on script preparation, location taping, camera operation, lenses, camera mounts, tripods, stabilizers, taping from moving vehicles & aircraft, lighting, sound, sound effects, makeup (blood & such), table-top modeling, studio recording, auditioning, announcer selection, translation, video effects, sound mixing, editing, formatting, titling and duplicating. It should all take about 4 years.

ASK THE EXPERT

Safety Best Practices

For this week's "Ask the Expert," SafetyXChange is pleased to offer the services of Art Fettig.

Celebrating 59 years of working in the area of employee safety, Motivational Humorist Art Fettig is known as America's #1 Safety Commitment Catalyst. He has produced signed personal commitments to safety and to positive interaction from tens of thousands of employees in major corporations throughout the U.S. and Canada. According to Fettig, "I get everyone in your organization on your safety team."

In 2002 the National Safety Council presented Art their highest award to an individual, The Distinguished Service to Safety Award, for his contribution to the Safety Field.

Born in Michigan, Art began working in the safety field with the Grand Trunk Western Railroad where he spent many years as a Claim Agent investigating tragic accidents and employee injuries. "We were the worst in the nation in safety." Following years of struggle, Art finally convinced a railroad president that together they could create a change in attitudes and behavior. In the ten years that Art worked directly with the company president, their railroad went from one of the worst to one of the safest railroads in America, three times winning the Harriman Award.

Fettig has taken his message of commitment worldwide keynoting conferences and working directly with employees with major clients in the power, petrol, natural gas, construction, railroad, telephone and many other fields, from Kalamazoo to Kuala Lumpur, from the Florida Keys on up north to Prudhoe Bay and from the islands of Hawaii to the jungles of Mexico.

Art is the veteran of over 4,000 live presentations worldwide and in 1980 was designated a Certified Speaking Professional by the National Speakers Association.

The founder and president of Growth Unlimited Inc. - a 27-year-old corporation committed to improving employee attitudes and behavior - Art is also the author of over 50 books and booklets including, Winning the Safety Commitment and his booklet titled You Do WHAT While You Drive?.

Now residing in North Carolina, Art provides keynote safety presentations for associations and major corporations.

If You Have Questions for Art

Art is available to answer your questions on employee attitudes and behavior, and how to gain employee commitment to safety.

Submit your questions to catherinej@bongarde.com. Art will try his best to answer as many of your questions as possible. We'll publish your questions and Art's answers in next Thursday’s SafetyXChange newsletter.

Story Tools:  Email This Post  Print This Post Top