A.C.E. - Skanska

This is my latest video for Mentor Foundation USA. These students from Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering High School participated in an Authentic Career Experience (A.C.E.) workshop with Skanska Infrastructure Development North America at their office in Alexandria, VA. Like the H&M A.C.E. video, we wanted to make a video that summarized the event and could also be used to promote the program to other businesses and schools. Skanska actually plans to use this video as part of their diversity and community programs. 

I shot the interviews (and unused b-roll), edited the entire video, and created the graphics. The b-roll from the actual event came from A&E Networks from the event last year. There were a few challenges in making the video but it was fun figuring them out. A small problem was that A&E's footage was shot at 720p, smaller than the 1080p I use on my camera. I just needed scale the videos to fit the frame. Fortunately, they had enough resolution for that. 

On my end, there was the problem of interviewing two people at once with only one lav mic. We wanted to have the kids play off each other while speaking, so I clipped the mic on the shoulder of the kid closer to the center. I'm not thrilled with the extra background noise, but I eventually reduced that. The music also hid it. 

There's the section with Karl's interview. That came from a finished video by A&E. In other words, I didn't have access to the original interview footage. The finished video already had a music track, so I looked for music that was very similar to the background music in A&E's video. I think it worked out pretty well, considering I couldn't edit out the existing music. 

Putting a Small Wonder Media logo at the end was new. I hadn't done it before, but the marketing director urged me to do it.