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Let's talk about difficult things while showing the moment it turns around.

This piece is a part of a three video campaign. It shows how Madison College helps students overcome common challenges to going to school.

This series was shot efficiently across two days. Each video has two shots. The first shot is in reverse and feels like something negative is happening. Then the shot freezes and reverses back to forward and the scene plays out positively. Getting that trick right took a lot of planning and organization. We needed to show something that when reversed from a certain point could feel negative. But when played back forward it would actually turn into something positive.

The shot was broken down into a few parts and then rearranged:

  1. A – Primary negative – can be reversed and seems negative
  2. B – Turning point – split between sad expressions and happy
  3. C – Primary Positive – everything is happy

For this video, the action was recorded in the following order. We’ll call our character Tom.

  1. A – Tom takes out backpack and has a neutral/sad expression
  2. B – Tom pauses
  3. C – Tom smiles and leaves out of the door

For the video, it is reordered:

  1. A reverse – Tom puts his backpack away and looks sad
  2. A beginning – Pause, music, and VO change to positive
  3. A forward – Tom pulls his backpack out
  4. B – Tom holds his expression then it changes to positive
  5. C – Tom smiles and leaves out of the door

This is one example of how we can take a prompt: “show a student overcoming an issue keeping them from going to school” and make something creative and engaging out of it.