Ridge Films - Professional Corporate Video Production Sydney, Australia

Ken Shelston

[transcript]

What was your reason for choosing video?

Ken: "There’s a market issue across the whole of local government and to a large degree in some of those professions in terms of a shortage of a very tight labour market and so, those things are impacting but internally in our own organization, Sutherland Council’s got nearly four five hundred people that are going to retire in ten years’ time. Now, where’s the people coming along behind? We looked at putting a strategy together with a number of actions and one of those was to get a DVD that we could use to market the opportunities we have at the Council for local schools, universities, TAFE colleges and just more generally to the local government industry to let people know the level of opportunity we have at Sutherland Council."

What were the benefits of producing a recruitment video?

Ken: "One of the reasons we selected video is because it’s a cost-effective medium to get the message out to a broad range of people. You know, if we employ someone, well that’s a much larger fixed expenditure that doesn’t get the same you know, return on that investment that we’re putting in."

What were your expectations?

Ken: "We had some concepts that we wanted to get across and principally they were that our organization was big, it had a lot of opportunity and it was a good place to work and that was the sort of brief we gave to the people that we went out to, to come back and give us some ideas. We were really looking for value for money. We were also looking for ideas and sort of an innovative approach to what the script line, the story lines, the sort of concept that was being sold and that’s the reason we went with Ridge and that process because we were most impressed with the submission that came in."

How did your ideas change?

Ken: "We sort of had a blank sheet of paper really. We had started off with the idea of perhaps a script with actors and a voiceover and ended up with all our staff. It just sort of developed… “Well let’s have testimonials”… “That’s a good idea”. Let’s start with a you know, an introduction and a sort of a demographic of what the place is like and finish off with another sort of statement and that turned out really well. The idea of producing testimonials was something that we hadn’t considered and that was something that came out of the very first meeting we had and I guess we weren’t the experts. We were just looking for someone who knew how to sell the message. We had the message to sell but we didn’t know how to sell it and the product at the end has been particularly well-received as a result of that and so I guess that evolution of development of the DVD was to some degree, it was sort of a work in progress."

How was proofing the video?

Ken: "We had a look at it and we needed to add another couple of testimonials from different parts of our workforce that hadn’t been put in there and that was fine. We did that and we also wanted to professionally voice it over, which obviously was something Ridge was going to do for us.

My initial response at seeing it was yeah, quite blown away really. Even though obviously we still had some work to do but just the guts of the thing, which was what we saw on the first day, was great."

Was this video a good investment for the Sutherland Shire Council?

Ken: "The Council is very happy with the video. We’ll be distributing it through our website for basically downloading in a number of formats for anyone to download.

For the Council, this project was something we wanted to get off the ground quickly. We wanted to work with a local company, which you know we like doing at the Council. Ridge met all those criteria and delivered the product that we wanted and so we you know, we’d be happy to use Ridge again in some other sort of way. I’d expect at least a three to five year lifespan. The guys at Ridge Films worked with us, were very professional. Yeah…we’re very happy with it."

!