Overview
Goal
To create a company video to highlight and introduce Paladin Security’s US sub-company, PalAmerican Security’s culture and commitments to its employees. This video project is a part of the bigger PalAmerican website relaunch project which heavily focuses on promoting and further establishing PalAmerican’s image in the industry.
Teammates
Mainly working on the project myself. Paladin Security and PalAmerican Security’s marketing members assisted me in collecting photos and footage. The voiceover was also done by one of the team members.
Tools
After Effects, Adobe Premiere
Time
2.5 weeks
Introduction
PalAmerican recruitment video was one of the major video projects I did during my co-op term with Paladin Security.
Ever since the pandemic, the need for security services has increased. Because of this situation, it was the right timing for Paladin Security and its sub-company in the US, PalAmerican Security to consider reaffirming their expertise and image in the industry. Following the Paladin and PalAmerican's website relaunch projects, creating a new recruitment video to reinforce their impact became the next goal. Especially for PalAmerican that has been expanding tremendously in the US. Therefore, my role as the video editor and motion graphic designer became exceptionally crucial in completing the puzzle.
Brand Research and Company Requirements
To better assist the company to achieve its goal, it was crucial to make a concrete video pre-production plan to gather information and requirements from the company. I initiated meetings with all the marketing team members to understand the company's vision of the project.
Since consistency is one of the most important aspects of design, I revisited Paladin and PalAmerican's brand guidelines and existing youtube channels to help me discuss the level of creative freedom that I could explore. Figure 1 is a quick screenshot of the brand research I did before the meeting. Dark blue and yellow are Paladin as well as PalAmerican's primary colours. Through doing comparisons and research, I discovered the company uses solid shapes, yellow borders and blue backgrounds frequently.
Moreover, I brought up crucial questions such as: "What would be the tone of the video? ", "What would be the style the team is looking for in the video?", “What kind of image that PalAmerican would like to emphasize to the clients?” and "how should the music and voiceover sound like?" to frame and evaluate what the company is looking for.
Because of this company meeting, my impression of security is refreshed — PalAmerican would love to rebrand themselves as “a friendly security company making America a safer place." This slogan gave a new direction on how to approach the video. Instead of using serious team photos and music, it is more important to find a balance to show PalAmerican is an approachable company. Hence, it became crucial to find another angle to demonstrate the brand without heavily emphasizing their serious side (Figure 2).
Organization and Brainstorming
The other team members quickly curated photos or footage I could use in the video. I then started drafting the storyboards (Figure 3). Instead of focusing on conveying a sense of urgency and high alertness, I decided to mainly use photos and footage that highlight a positive teamwork environment. In a sense, I would like to also illustrate how PalAmerican celebrates and supports its employees who work in different aspects of security (Figure 4).
Storyboard Run-Through and Challenges
I later initiated a second meeting to go over my storyboard. Some of the feedback I received was to not use any officers with masks and arrange more diverse photos to illustrate PalAmerican as a friendly security company. Nevertheless, due to the pandemic, it was difficult to collect recent photos and footage for the video. I then utilized photoshop to improve and re-edit some photos to match the theme and standards.
One of the major pieces of feedback I encountered aside from the photos was how to further emphasize and visualize the employee's career growth and PalAmerican's values in the video (Figure 5). Having team photos wasn't enough. I then suggested inserting appropriate motion graphics or photo transitions to guide the audience to understand the idea. After my team members were satisfied with the suggestions, I went on exploring possible icon motion graphics and animation in After Effects.
Motion Graphics and Resolving Challenges
Not having many real-world experiences with motion graphics, I kept the brand guidelines in mind when researching ways to animate icons and transitions. I sketched out and designed the icons used in the video. To accurately keep up the energetic vibe for the video, I repeatedly tested out multiple types of icon animations with the music (Figure 6). This detailed tweaking also had made the video livelier and friendlier — which was what PalAmrican pursued.
Nevertheless, the challenge of visualizing employee growth and teamwork was still unresolved. Originally, my team was fond of the idea of having a complex 3D dimensional arrow animation where the arrow would end up diverging into different paths. However, due to the tight deadline and the amount of research I needed for the techniques, I suggested the team go with simple but effective 2D animation. Closely working with the team, my team was satisfied with the animation of having an employee character slowly climbing up the career growth stairs (Figure 7). This representation is suitable for the style of Paladin and PalAmerican's brand and at the same also can effectively highlight the supportive culture.
Reflection
Overall, the project is successful and it is currently embedded on PalAmerican's website to promote its positive brand culture. This experience, on the other hand, is also valuable to me. In the past, I didn't feel comfortable working with motion graphics and video editing. I was actually nervous when I was assigned this project at first. Nevertheless, this type of team collaboration and opportunity to polish my video skills had always been something I wanted to have more experience with.
Throughout the project, I was amazed by the level of flexibility I had to have as a video editor and motion graphic designer. You would likely encounter challenges that require you to utilize other forms of design skills such as photo editing skills, vector icon creation skills, music/voiceover editing skills as well as video effects skills (VFX).
Among these skillsets, I was inexperienced with VFX and transitions. Sometimes, I would spend a relatively long time planning transitions or animation. I think I will be able to utilize these skills more maturely later on with practice.