Project Spotlight: Video Resumes (MMM#36)
Greetings all,
Madeline here with the 36th entry in The Movie Minute. Today’s entry is another special one focused on one of our projects: video resumes!
If you’ve followed previous Movie Minutes, you know we provide video for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation’s College to Career Transition Conference (C2CT), formerly known as the Strong Finish Optimization conference (SFO). While we do also produce a highlight video for the event, the core creation is a slate of video resumes, where students who attend the conference take on the opportunity to participate in a video crafted to them individually. The finished video acts as a way for the students to show to potential employers and the world who they are and what makes them stand out in the professional world.
Before every C2CT conference, we craft a survey of questions for potential participants, and then coordinate with SOWF to invite attendees to sign up. The responses to these surveys assist us when preparing the questions that we will ask the participants. We try to keep some of these questions as open-ended as possible, as that allows the students to provide their own unique responses and even direct some of the questions to make their resume theirs.
Before we get cameras rolling, we first have the attendees select what time they would like to participate in their resume after that day’s events and lectures. We also set up the stage for the week, usually in the conference room. It typically consists of a chair for the interviewer (usually Jacob), one for the DP (Taylor), and one for the interviewee as well. We set up a lighting kit with softboxes to provide a fill and key light, and we include two cameras to roll for a wide and tight angle, such as two Sony FS7s. High-quality audio is also crucial to producing a great interview, so we mount a RODE Wireless Pro mic with a lavalier attachment mounted on the interviewee’s top, which is connected to a wireless receiver that also connects to one of the cameras. In addition, a boom mic is connected to the other camera as well.
Once we’ve moved on to post-production, we sync all of the video and audio footage together to get the full interviews set up. We also ask each student to send supplementary media to go with their resume, usually photo or video of them at school, work, travelling, etc. While we can and often do use some stock footage for each video, we try to source from b-roll of the student shot throughout the conference as well as media sent from them as much as possible, as that will make their resumes more authentic and personal. Finally, after implementing revisions from rough drafts shared with the SOWF team, we share each resume with the students for them to review and share in any way they choose, making sure to also ask them if they’re comfortable with SOWF sharing their resume on their social media channels as well.
To wrap things up, the video resume is one of the most impactful projects we produce here at Poor Bear Stories. As I had the opportunity to participate in a video resume myself when I was interning with Jacob back in 2022, this has been a great way to return the favor by helping produce resumes for other SOWF graduates as well. While it can be time-consuming, it forms a core part of the work we do and what makes SOWF graduates like myself and Jacob able to present themselves in a creative and engaging way.
That’s all for this entry in The Movie Minute. Wishing you all the best, and see y’all in 2! -Madeline
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