Lights, Camera, Intern Action!
Meet Tucker Tyree—BOT's First Video Production Intern
Tucker brought his imaginative (sometimes off-the-wall) ideas to Bright Orange Thread—pushing us to try new things. Even *gulp* putting Hendrik-Jan on camera (stay tuned for the world premiere)!
Peek behind the “bright orange curtain” and watch Tucker's video about his experience interning at Bright Orange Thread!
Video Transcript
Hi, I'm Tucker…
What you need to know about me is I love video
Hi. My name is Tucker Tyree, and I'm an intern at Bright Orange Thread. I'm 18 years old, and I recently graduated from Salesianum High School, and I'm excited to be attending the University of Southern California. What you need to know about me is I love video, especially understanding what elements go into a viral video, and particularly when it comes to YouTube.
I wanted to learn how video can be used for more than just entertainment.
So when I started interning for Bright Orange Thread, I had to shift my focus from virality to practicality, getting less, but significantly more valuable views.
The audience that is engaged on YouTube and the audience that we're trying to attract here on Bright Orange Thread are not necessarily the same audience. So, a part of that shift was understanding the new audience, and then learning about their interests so that I can make videos specifically for that.
What I Learned
Think like a CEO & deliver valuable information
This shift really forced me into a new mindset when thinking about videos. Less booms, and explosions, and transitions, and the sort, and more focused on valuable information that the CEO of a company can watch and really take something away. While I was in this mindset, I did a couple of things.
- I wrote the Bright Orange Thread Video Style Guide to explain best practices for retaining engagement.
- I created a simple and scalable way for Bright Orange Thread to continue making videos, without a fancy editor using slide decks and Wistia Soapbox.
- And then I created an animation concept by learning a new processing software.
Design “Crash Course” with Canva
I also got to learn a couple of things while I was here. While working on a local SEO video series, I got to learn all about visual design elements while working in Canva. The biggest thing I learned working at Bright Orange Thread is how to create a positive, productive work environment.
Process-driven approach to work
When I started working at Bright Orange Thread, Hendrik-Jan sent me all kinds of documents detailing their style guides, but more importantly, all of the processes that they do. For example, they have a project management software called Base Camp where you log all of your projects that you're working on, and here are the updates, and it makes it very quick and convenient to just go through and think, “Okay, here's the next step, here's what I have to do.”
Balancing work & fun with the team
On top of that, we have something called check-in every morning, where we just meet on Zoom and we just talk, and we talk about mostly, “Here's what we're going to do today. Here's the business that we have to get done,” but we also get to talk about, and it's encouraged even, to just talk about your day, and not the day that you're about to have, but the one that you just have and, “Oh, here's what I did last night, and here's what we're going to do this weekend. And here's how I'm feeling.” It's just a really good way to connect, not worker-to-worker, but human-to-human, and Bright Orange Thread gets that. And so I get to take that knowledge, that understanding of here's what a positive workplace looks like and when I'm looking for, future jobs, I can say, “Yeah, this place, they get it. They understand the human element as well, and I want to work for them because they remind me of Bright Orange Thread.”
Final Product: BOT Promotional Video Series (coming soon!)
And last but not least, the biggest project that I worked on for Bright Orange Thread was a promotional video series for the website. Using all of the insights, and knowledge, and the mindset that I was talking about earlier, I story-boarded, filmed, and edited a promotional video series so that Bright Orange Thread can market itself.
And not to get to YouTube-er on you, but the link will be right on this page, so you should absolutely go check it out.