How to Film Customer Insights: Camera Operator

Digital still and motion imaging has come a long way. As technology continues to grant us the luxury of shooting in the dark, record events unseen like a ninja and render them with emotive qualities, it’s becoming easier for researchers to share stories from the field and stir the emotional pot. As one of our Design Directors point out, Ken Fry, video is a compelling outlet to get the emotional draw we need as part of our research goals. Below I’m going to share a few quick thoughts on what we’ve learned so far as we get deeper in all this video business.

This is going to be a 3 part series on how you can film participants as part of a customer insights deliverable.  This is a specific type of output that does 3 things for us:

1. Greater client engagement by selling high level insights from the participant themselves
2. Greater audience immersion (designers and clients) in the research without the paperwork
3. Greater distribution and communication because of its sharable format

I will cover this in 3 parts because there are key roles that need to be filled in order to do this smoothly.  Having an individual for each role would be ideal, but I understand that constraints due to resourcing can be a challenge. I advice that you get at least 2 people on the team because there are a lot of variable to track and you need someone to pay attention before things go wrong. Next, clarify who is in charge of each role and how the responsibilities are divided. Let me repeat, make it clear like oil and water that everyone knows their role.  The first of this as you can read is the Camera Operator (CO). Following this post I will focus on the Producer and then the Researcher role. The CO seems like the most unique role in terms of a traditional research study, so I will dive into that first.

Responsibilities

Generally the camera operator is in charge of all things related to the image and sound of the capture. It’s rather vague, I know, but I will go into a little more detail about how these two things can make or break a final reel. To learn more about shooting film, check out the resources below. What might be more interesting is how those practices impact the research output.

Composition

Framing can be an artistic exploration, but for our purposes, we wish to follow a documentary style. There are 3 simple ways to talk about it:

• Establishing your scene
• Providing perspective
• Showing emotion

An establishing shot is a wide angle shot that captures the context that you are filming. If you’re filming an in store shopping experience, show the entire store from the outside and also show the person you’re talking to surrounded by their environment. This tells the viewer where the person is and what to expect from the video. You will always need an establishing shot any time you introduce a new context. It makes it a lot clearer to the viewer what is going on and makes it easier for them to enjoy the video. Viewers are smart people, they can connect dots really quickly.

B-Reel/Roll

Sitting and watching a talking head is only marginally interesting. Instead, you may consider capturing extra footage on other things that are relevant to the scene itself. For instance, if a person is talking about how much text messaging they do in a day, it would be good to not only note that, but to also take some footage of them holding and gesturing their phone. You can then cut that bit into your video with a voice over of them speaking to it. These cut scenes keep the video interesting and engaging. More importantly, you want to incorporate the artifacts that make up the person’s experience and tells a more holistic story. You can capture B-reel footage during the study with a second camera or you can capture it before/after the study has completed. If you do the latter, take note of what was interesting during the study and use that as a shortlist when you’re ready.

Another way to think about it is considering it as a field visit. It’s not uncommon to visit a location to understand environments potential users experience. You look at the same things such as technology availability, activity flow and key interactions (software and human to human). By capturing these different observable things, you essentially have your B-Reel footage halfway captured!

Lighting

If you can help it, rent a lighting kit. They’re cheap ($25 for a day) and it makes life so much easier. Otherwise, find a location that gets a lot of light. The more light you have, the cleaner your video will be. Increasing gain, or sensitivity, on our camera to compensate for the low levels of light should only be used as a last resort. Doing so will make the footage noisy and you will end up losing details that make an image feel sharp.

This is also something you can do and monitor while doing your initial field visit. As you shoot the B-Reel, you will visually see how well the lighting looks and how that impacts the quality. Take note of where the good spots are and where you will run into complications. For our Snowbird project, we spent a day hanging out at Snowboard Connection with our cameras shooting people shopping, buying stuff and racks full of merchandise. We were able to see where we can bring people in to get enough lighting, as well as capture some of the B-Reel that tell the viewer what the environment is like as part of the experience.

Sound

Here’s the funny thing: You can have poor video quality and great audio and still have a good story. On the other hand, you cannot have great video quality and poor audio and still have a good story. The clarity of the sound trumps the visual part of video. Plain and simple. You would be doing justice to your deliverable by ensuring the audio you record is clean and noise free. This requires that you purchase a decent lavaliere and you control everything in the area that makes noise.

Untethering audio

I recommend a lavaliere because you can find wireless sets for a good price and they will always record at a consistent level no matter where you are with the camera. Using other devices like a boom mic will result in excellent audio as well as eliminating the mic being clipped onto the person’s shirt. However, using it means you need another person who is responsible for holding it and moving it as the person moves. Not very unobtrusive. A shotgun mic might also be an affordable solution, but if there is a lot of movement in a run and gun situation where the person will change distance from the camera then you end up with inconsistent levels. So really, stick with a wireless lavaliere for now unless you can guarantee more resources.

The location you choose to shoot might have noise coming from different places. It’s important to take the time to eliminate them before shooting. If you’re in a person’s home doing an in situ recording, ask to unplug the fridge or air conditioner if it poses a potential problem. At work, we tend to have music playing. Take a moment to remind people that a session will be running and to keep music low with signs around the area. These simple things will make a big difference. Not to mention, you only get one shot at it with a participant who only has 60 minutes available to you.

General Tips

• Get a decent video tripod or a monopod
• Take time to learn the ins and outs of your camera. Once you do, turn off the auto settings
• Bring extra batteries on hand
• Bring extra tapes on hand
• Coordinate with the researcher on what shots to expect in relation to the discussion guide
• Take at least 30 minutes between each session to break, review notes and adapt

Resources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_operator
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_(visual_arts)
• http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1554-how-to-film-customer-case-study-videos
• http://lifehacker.com/software/digital-video/8-ways-to-shoot-video-like-a-pro-214043.php
• http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/shoot-video.html
• http://digital-photography-school.com/digital-photography-tips-for-beginners

2 comments March 10th, 2009

SnowBird Update: Consumer Highlights Reel

Snowbird Video Ethnography from Artefact on Vimeo.

When you’re doing the research, you can tell your audience what you’ve learned, or even show them in some meaningful way like photography. But why do that when you can let the people speak for themselves? Above is a video we put together that highlights many of the insights we’ve uncovered from our quick visit to Snowboard Connect and people’s homes. As Jennifer mentioned in a previous post, we’ve taken away from this research a lot of experiences we could brainstorm with. The goal of this video was to share the main messages we heard from customers to get their minds running on creating a better experience.

Recommendations
Here are the recommendations we wish to make to retailers who are involved with “high investment” shopping:

• Help customers compare products in the store. You may not like the fact that they want to do it, but they will do it, and wouldn’t it be great if they could do it in the store? You may actually learn from your customers’ research process and adjust your inventory accordingly.
• Help customers identify and evaluate products in store that match/complement/are compatible with their existing equipment and clothing – how might you enable this without requiring them to lug all the stuff they own into the store (which of course they won’t do). But remember, different users evaluate differently. For example, women shop by color, men by brand.
• Look for opportunities to sustain excitement level between online and offline. If a user has done research online how can they reuse the information in the store? How can you avoid sending them back to block one when they walk into a retail store? And the other way around.
• Help customers understand features and technology. Men hate asking questions and they will often walk out of the store if they can’t find what they need.
• Hire people who do what they sell. Expertise is precious, even in these internet heavy times.
• For any product category that allows for multiple levels of expertise to develop (like sports), consider treating your beginners differently, but be careful not to talk down to the experts.

Putting it Together
In conjunction with the video, we also prepared a presentation deck that contains additional details of what we learned, as well as some alignment with major trends we’re seeing in the world of commerce. We’re learning a lot about consumer behavior and how larger trends in technology and culture will play into evolving business strategies. Check it out and give us your feedback! We’d love to hear more thoughts from others.

Outlook
What’s next? We’ll be writing on some of our lessons learned from shooting video while doing ethnographic research in the field. Run and gun is certainly a challenging exercise that requires a lot of planning and resources. However, being able to replay those tasty observations again is a big plus.

The envisioning of the design phase is nearing an end, and we’ll be posting shortly on that as well.

Add comment January 31st, 2009

SnowBird Update: Meet John Logic, Store Owner and Problem Solver of Snowboard Connection

Meet John Logic, Store Owner and Problem Solver of Snowboard Connection from Artefact on Vimeo.

Meet John Logic. As co-owner and all around great guy of a popular local board shop, Snowboard Connection (Snocon), he works hard everyday solving problems as they walk through his doors. To him and the rest of his staff, it is about solving problems. We came to John to talk to him for 60 minutes about what makes Snocon a special place for him and his customers. The video above shows some of the highlights from our conversation with him. Below are additional notes from the interview.

Observations From The Field

Motivations

• Motivated to get people excited about snowboarding, or board sports in general
• Motivated by Nordstrom quality service (sales approach, policy and culture)
• Snowboarding is more than a sport, it’s a lifestyle
• Desires to make Snocon a place to hang out and socialize
• Major challenge this coming year is a decrease in consumer spending for an already expensive recreation

Behaviors

• Exist to solve people’s problems. Finding the right match based on customer’s experience and equipment
• Snocon reaches out to their community through events that they hold in store
• Some customers tend to make decisions solely off of aesthetic design of the graphics vs actual usefulness
• Girls shop by color where guys shop by brand
• Once a customer has a bad experience with a brand, they don’t return to it
• Limit to 3-4 choices at any one time, otherwise it becomes overwhelming for customers and they lose attention
• They serve beer in store as a gesture for trust and comfort

Roles

• Energizer
• Problem Solver
• Community Leader
• Decision Maker
• Facilitator
• Connector

Environments

• Limited in store brand presence to keep Snocon brand the more predominant one
• High online brand presence to sell products through ecommerce channel
• In store experiences offer a perspective that customers can’t get from just reading (trying out boots or boards)

Technology

• Vendor links and P2P business is the most efficient use of money for their online marketing
• Point of Sales (POS) and the E-Commerce site are the same. Everything is web based
• Brands design and provide fixtures for Snocon to use in store as a way to advertise and market
• Computer available on the floor to look up products via web

Our favorite insight? Snocon is driven by the quality of customer service other retailers like Nordstrom offers and competes with them on delivering that level of service for board sport products. It goes beyond just an amazing return policy, but also how personal sales staff interact with their customers to make sure that their customer’s needs are satisfied without blowing the budget.

He also runs a blog that regularly updates readers on new promotions, upcoming events and even a memo style announcement to his fellow staffers. Check it out!

5 comments December 30th, 2008