I recently completed a video project I was working on for the UT Southwestern Medical Center. Before I get into details, let me explain the title. The Dallas Preschool Readiness Project is a research project funded by UT Southwestern, the purpose is to observe and record data on children between the ages of 2 and 4 to determine educational standards and whether or not race and financial status affect a child’s preschool readiness. They are collecting this data by making home visits in which an expert observes and records the child’s behavior. Now comes the part where they brought me in. To properly conduct the study they needed 450 kids to participate, so my video was aimed towards parents and communities, trying to convince them to enroll their kids in the study.

As with any other video project there were two basic steps, shooting and editing. I had to shoot multiple interviews of the administrators of this project and as for B-Roll I caught a break because their method of collecting data for research was to record their interactions with the kids and to record the kids playing with their parents. So I had great B-Roll footage ready for me. After recording the interviews I collected all the B-Roll and went to work. This part was harder than I expected. Most of my experience as an editor has been with live events, extended classes or seminars, and course trailers. Creating a promotional video which would last at least 3 minutes was new for me. A few of the tasks at hand were; keeping it interesting, making it flow, and making the B-Roll match the voice-overs. So After 6 drafts I finally had a final result that I was ready to present. They were very pleased with the results and I was satisfied with my work. I would love to post the video here but they said they are going to hold off on putting it online. So when and if they decide to make it public I will definitely post a link here.