What do you get when you give a group of Public Affairs Specialists cameras and drop them into a stunning landscape of mountains, rivers, and reservoirs?
A few awesome videos, a handful of epic stories, and a bunch of federal employees ready to collapse!
During the week of June 24, 2024, Public Affairs Specialist from across the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Great Lakes and Ohio River Division (LRD) gathered in the picturesque terrain that surrounds the Huntington District in West Virginia for the second annual Visual Storytelling Workshop.
The purpose of the workshop is to give Public Affairs teams the resources and time to learn and adopt new skills and techniques, while encouraging them to be creative, and to take risks they may not have the ability to take while working in their home districts. The overall goal of the workshop was to create several video products that could be used to enlighten and educate the LRD audience about pertinent topics and stories.
Michael Sauret, Public Affairs Specialist with the Pittsburgh District, lead the efforts for the workshop. As a recipient of numerous awards for his videography and photography work for both the Army and USACE, Sauret’s expertise helped the group learn more about the craft of visual storytelling. Whether it was learning new camera skills, understanding how to operate different kinds of equipment, pre-production planning, or video/photo editing, Sauret made sure to fill any gaps in knowledge and experience throughout the group.
“The best workshops bring people at close proximity with each other, spending time together, side-by-side, sharing ideas, brainstorming together, passing on tips and tricks in real-time,” said Sauret. “That is the most effective way to learn a lot of material in very little time. The visual storytelling workshop places participants right in the action where all the theories of shot composition, camera movements, sound, or whatever else, must face the reality of execution.”
As the organizing district of this year’s workshop, the Huntington District’s Public Affairs Specialist Anna-Marie Ward worked alongside Sauret to devise a plan to split participants into numerous teams. Each team was given an assignment focusing on a specific topic and location. Teams were sent to numerous sites around the Huntington District’s area of operation, which spans from Central Ohio all the way to parts of North Carolina.
Each team was given their topics and locations in advance to prepare the pre-production for their video. Upon arrival, Sauret assisted each team by lending equipment and demonstrating videography techniques and tactics to prepare each team for the days ahead. Participants were given two full days to capture all the necessary footage for their videos, which included a short video reel, and B-Roll edit as well. Teams were given one last full day to edit their products before showcasing what they created.
The only sustaining criteria for each team was to try something new. With participants from various levels of experience, for some, it was their first creating a video product. Others might have decades of experience creating and producing video products; however, the goal of the workshop was to be creative, and to implement techniques they’ve never done before, or haven’t had the right resources to do in the past.
“These workshops force people to get out and experiment new ways of producing video and photo stories,” said Sauret. “Workshops push participants to become creative and try unconventional or different methods they would have never considered before.”
The Red Team was comprised of Buffalo District’s Andre Hampton and Ryan Campbell. Their assignment was to create a video highlighting boating and water safety at Summersville Lake, which is the Huntington District’s largest recreation site. They were given the opportunity to travel on the water with park rangers to discuss boating procedures and learn more about the project area. Their video not only highlights the beautiful scenery of the lake, but also includes informational interviews where viewers can learn all about safety in, on, and near the water. They effortlessly captured all of the fun activities that happen at a corps recreation site, while still making a product that can be an extremely informational as a public service announcement.
Great Lakes and Ohio River Division’s Kyler Davis and Huntington District’s Anna-Marie Ward made up the White Team, who created a video about the importance of proper protective gear while visiting Bluestone Dam, a megaproject in the district currently undergoing massive construction phases. The purpose of the video was for stakeholders, teammembers, or any other individuals to understand the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) to wear at any USACE construction site. Though very short, the video used humor to demonstrate the importance of PPE, tied in with B-Roll to highlight workers wearing PPE while performing hazardous work on the megaproject.
On the Blue Team was Nashville District’s Leon Roberts, Chicago District’s Emily Helton, and Louisville District’s Michael Maddox. They were tasked with visiting the Regional Repair Fleet doing a variety of fabrication work at the Marietta Repair Station. The fleet is critical for the USACE enterprise, as they offer innovative solutions to complex construction challenges, creating significant cost savings for the corps. This fleet travels across the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division to make important repairs at many projects, and the video team was tasked with capturing all the diverse work done by this team to ensure mission success. Their video is a documentary-style product, with a voice over to highlight and explain how important the fleet is. The B-Roll for this video showcased the many techniques learned throughout the workshop, utilizing a wide array of angles, focal lengths, and compositions to produce a video that is not only informative, but incredibly visually interesting.
Three amazing videos were produced by the teams, along with a collection of B-Roll and vertical reels for social media that can be recycled and used in many future products. Whether the finished products were comedic shorts, interesting documentaries, or collections of informational interviews with experts; each video fulfilled the task and shared key insights into the USACE mission. It’s not hard to see that participants were thinking outside of the box, and the result proved to be worth the hard work and risks that were taken throughout the workshop.
“For me, serving others is the most rewarding part of anything I do, but especially when I can pass my knowledge, skills and passion for photography and video to other professionals who want to grow and learn,” said Sauret. “We don’t exist in this world, nor do we exist in this career, for ourselves. We exist to serve others, and by mentoring others, the workshop offers me an opportunity to serve them.”
To see the video products from the workshop, click the links below.
Marietta Repair Station Fabricates Parts to Support Maintenance Operations at Hannibal Locks and Dam
Reel:
Video:
Water Safety at Summersville Lake
B-Roll:
Video:
Proper Wear of PPE at a Corps Project
Video:
Reel:
B-Roll:
Behind the scenes photos can be found here https://www.dvidshub.net/image/8545582