Safety Training: When Effective Videos Really Make a Difference

Creating safety training videos that help keep workers safe

We really enjoy creating safety training videos for industrial and manufacturing clients. These safety videos have one purpose: keep employees safe from injury or worse on the job. For this recent shoot, we traveled to south Texas to film on location for a long-time client of ours.

This was one of those “challenging” shoots, where we just had to meet it head-on as each location presented itself. Tripod, light, and recorder/monitor were all on wheels; that was the right call on our set-up as we moved our "mobile studio" from machine to machine. Our set-up was key to get critical input from our safety training experts. Therefore, they could see everything we were shooting and we could shoot retakes as needed to show the process. 

Very quickly our crew expanded to turn the workers into “lighting guys” and “production assistants” for our safety video production. The jokes flew about new careers in Hollywood. The crew bonding always happens as we deal with each scenario- acquiring good quality footage that hits the professional standard while also showing the all-important details that could save lives and avoid injuries.

It was hot. We all wore masks. We drank a lot of water. And we kept at it. From 7 AM until 2 PM, we demonstrated multiple “do’s and don’ts” at each station in both English and Spanish. 

Creating safety training for products, processes and plants.

We were very lucky to be working with a great on-camera expert who handled the commentary and demonstrations with great skill. As always, the out-takes were really funny. There was a lot of verbal “slating” for each station and shot inserts. Without that, we could have gotten very lost in the editing room. We’ve learned to make verbal notes to ourselves while we’re recording the images. 

As a result, the editing process was relatively easy and straightforward. We identified each station with English and Spanish title card headers. Usually, the review process has at least SOME adjustments. But the overall shoot and edit process worked well enough so that we got everything right the first time.

As the memory fades from this challenging COVID era shoot, we are left with a sense of accomplishment. We had applied our production skills and experience toward a worthy enterprise. Our client was happy with the result. 

It’s going to communicate safe best practices to the hard-working people who are on the job every day. 

As Austin-based video producers, we love what we do, even when it’s hard. The glimpse into the industrial world gives us a perspective that we couldn’t have without first-hand experience.

The safety training video production subject matter may have been specialized, but our tried-and-true production techniques worked.