Online Roving Ranger Video Production

1. The Perfect Staff

First, find a good interpreter. No matter how good your production values are, if you have poorly written material or a ranger who has a poor camera presence, you’re wasting your time. So first of all, find a good interpreter. Don’t be shy about letting your prospective in front of the camera talent (often simply referred to as “the talent”) know that they will have to do a screen test before being considered for the job.

You can kill two birds with one stone here, ask them to write a 90 to 120 second piece that they will use for their screen test. If they are bad at writing a script that is intended to be spoken, you’ll need to weed them out. Writing for the spoken word is a special talent. It is a talent that a lot of good interpreters have, however some of the best interpreters can write great outlines that they can develop into spectacular programs without being especially good at writing scripts that are meant to be spoken.

In fact, in ten years of field interpretation, I never wrote a script. Outlines were the way to go, in my opinion. Once I knew my outline, I could talk spontaneously on the subject, develop my theme effectively, and tell a compelling story. Compared to that, I find writing a succinct 90 second script to be torturous.

Unfortunately, scripts are required to produce quality ORR videos. Multiple takes of the same sentences will need to be interchangeable in the editing room. If your interpreter can’t work that way, you’ll need to find a new interpreter.

How you find the right interpreter depends a great deal on the size of your park and the cooperativeness of your managers. In a large park with cooperative management, I would recommend asking each supervisory interpreter to nominate the best interpreter in their district. Each of those candidates should be asked to write a script and take a screen test. By the time you are done filming, you’ll know who the best candidate is. Be sure to edit all of their efforts though. They should have something to show for their work, and you can use the videos to provide some variety in your ORR video offerings.

In smaller NPS units it may be significantly more difficult to find an interpreter able to write quality scripts and have the sort of camera presence you need. Sometimes though, some of the smallest units with tiny staffs have spectacular interpreters. Attend many interpretive programs if you’re in a smaller unit to find the best candidate. Then you’ll need to convince them of the value of the project and get their supervisor to agree to video production as an important collateral duty.

In some units, all you will need to do is show them the Inside Yellowstone videos, tell your manager you want to do something like that, and you will find phenomenal support. In other units, you won’t be able to find support to save your life. Some managers just don’t get it and never will. It has been my experience that the managers who do not support interpretation over the Internet are ignorant of the potential of the Internet as an effective means of reaching diverse and distant audiences. I’m not using the word ignorant lightly. I use it meaning exactly what it truly means, they are ignoring the potential of using the Internet for outreach and interpretation.

As far as finding a good videographer, editor, and production assistant goes, we can’t really afford to hire them. Some of us will turn out to be good ones, as we study film-making procedures, while others will be mediocre. Hopefully those of us who are downright bad at it will notice that ourselves and look for collateral duties other than video production.

Many NPS content producers avoid putting NPS employees’ names in the credits of their productions. I am encouraging all video producers to put everyone involved in their video credits whether they are NPS employees or not. Those credits will be helpful to managers who are trying to determine who they want to produce their videos for them. In fact, failure to mention everyone involved in the production is simply unacceptable in an organization that needs to identify the best candidates for our future productions.

You may have the impression that you need six staff members on every shoot; producer, director, videographer, editor, production assistant, and ranger-writer. In fact, all you need are 3 people. But you really need all three of those people. Going on a shoot with fewer than 3 will almost certainly result in reduced production values.

In our operation the producer, director, videographer and editor are all one person, me. I always go out with the ranger-writer and a production assistant. While it may seem that a production assistant is a luxury, that is certainly not the case. When filming a ranger in a flat hat, you will almost always need a production assistant with a reflector to shine some light up under the hat. Otherwise the ranger’s face will almost always be too dark and those compliments about the great production values won’t be coming in. We’ll cover types of reflectors, and their effective use, in a little while.

The question of how we can afford a production assistant frequently arises. We can’t afford one and we’re Yellowstone. Guess what that almost certainly means. You can’t afford one either. Our production assistant is a VIP. Even here in Yellowstone we were able to find a volunteer who was interested in video production and we couldn’t offer housing, or anything else for that matter. We were just lucky to find the right person, with the right interests, willing to fulfill the responsibilities of a production assistant. My best suggestion for you all is to look toward your VIP (volunteer) program for your production assistant.

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Tom Cawley
Online Roving Ranger Video Production
tom@rovingranger.com