Overview:

A member of my family working for the Air Ambulance recommended me to assist in a video project which the staff wanted creating. This video project was a tutorial on how to insert a Subclavian line into a patient which was represented by using a training model. The staff involved wanted this project to be informative to other staff learning to perform this procedure, and additionally wanted this project to look professional so they would be able to present this at seminars etc. for other training paramedics and doctors.

The Pre-Production Process:

My mindset for this project was that, as I am not aware of all of the medical processes involved in procedures such as this, I was going to allow the medical experts to brief me on what they wanted to make the project work as intended. Due to this and the limited time in which I had to film footage required (due to the busy nature of the Air Ambulance staff’s jobs), I did not create a storyboard or any scripts and instead just suggested different types of shots to the staff as I went along. As well as this, I spoke to the staff about any ideas I had, such as leaving room for captions on equipment shots.

The Filming Process:

For the filming process, technology was an important factor. The Air Ambulance had provided iPads to film on, however I opted to use my DSLR camera. Whilst this camera is optimised for photography, I felt as though it would provide better quality which would be required for an intricate tutorial such as this. Furthermore, whilst the microphone on the DSLR camera isn’t perfect, I shot a test video and the staff were satisfied that the audio quality on the camera was good enough for what they required. I started with a medium shot of the equipment table which was consciously chosen as I wanted to add captions to the equipment and would therefore need space for these to fit in. For the parts of the tutorial which utilised the practice model, I used an close-up shot whilst angling down at the model in order to show viewers exactly what the presenting doctor was doing as well as to give an indication as to what people may be expecting to see when they tried this procedure themselves. For this close-up, I made sure to prioritise the collarbone and left shoulder area of the practice model as this was where the procedure took place and thus allowed the presenting doctor to give any tips on insertion etc. without being cut off by the camera.

The Post-Production Process:

The initial step in my post-production process was ordering the clips correctly to make the video coherent as this would be the basis for any technical aspects to be added. As the project was meant to be informative rather than too artistic, I kept transitions simple by adding a wipe between clips. My intention here was to make the video seem smoother rather having it jump from video to video. Whilst the majority of transitions were kept simple, I noticed in some instances, the audio from one clip would be necessary whereas the video wasn’t, with the proceeding clip being necessary visuals with no audio. As a result, I used a J cut transition to continue the audio from a previous clip onto the next video. This removed any unnecessary video sections as well as making sure that there was no moments of silence which would hinder the flow of the video. Simple graphic elements were used such as a title and end card as this gave more structure to the tutorial by having a clear start and finish. For the title card, I utilised B-roll footage from the procedures which I blurred and added a title above. This was to adhere to the theme of a medical tutorial whilst avoiding having a still image which may have seemed out of place with the video elements. The end card, however, was a still image as this needed to give important information such as the names of the doctors that presented this. Another graphic element added was captions. These were added with the equipment so that viewers would know the exact specifications of the equipment they needed to use. This may not have been too necessary as typically people learning how to perform this procedure would have adequate medical knowledge for apexes such as equipment, however I added this just to be sure. Because of this, I created two versions of the video – one with captions and one without – as I was then able to cover all bases if needs be.

Challenges and Solutions:

Challenge 1 – Medical Knowledge – For captions on the video, I did not have the medical knowledge required to list the correct names for each piece of equipment however I did not want to take a blind guess as if this information was incorrect, that would make the whole video inaccurate.

Solution – As my dad is an Air Ambulance paramedic, he was able to identify a number of the items correctly and give me the spellings for each of these. I also double checked the information by contacting the doctors that I had worked with who were then able to send me the list of equipment names from the equipment pack which was used in the video.

Challenge 2 – Camera Difficulties – I faced a few difficulties with my camera whilst filming. First of all, my auto-focus was unable to pick up the exact focus I wanted and I therefore had to switch to manual focus mode which left some clips out of focus. Next, I do not own any stabilising equipment for when I am holding my camera and therefore some scenes appeared shaky.

Solution – For the focus, I tried to manually correct this as much as possible by setting up every shot beforehand. Whilst this worked for the most part, some shots required a change of focus, such as focussing on a doctor’s hand instead of the model. As a result, I adjusted the focus midway through filming to fix this issue. For the camera shake, there was not too much I could do during the filming process to solve this. During post-production however, I discovered that a large amount of the shaky footage was hidden by the scene-to-scene transition wipes. Whilst some instances are still visible (as I could not remove these without also removing key information), the majority of clips with shake were fixed this way.

The Project:

Provided below is a link to the video file on my Google Drive. As this video is a medical tutorial being used by experts to teach a specific procedure, I am hesitant to publish this on any sites such as YouTube, Vimeo etc. as this information is for the use of the Air Ambulance, not random online viewers. However, the video is available to view below as this is my portfolio blog rather than a video streaming site, and therefore it is clear that the purpose of viewing here is to see my personal work.

Project Update 21/05/21:

Since creating this project, I have been contacted by a different Air Ambulance service, the Midlands Air Ambulance Charity, asking if it would be possible for me to create an alternate version of this project to include their logo on the end card as they would like to use this tutorial as well. As a result, I created this second version keeping the rest of the video exactly the same so that multiple organisations could utilise the same tutorial. This indicates to me that this project was well received by those asking me to create it as it is being used on a wider scale between multiple organisations.

Project Update 21/07/21:

As previously mentioned, I was contacted on behalf of a separate Air Ambulance service to produce the same video with their graphic featured. More recently, a third Air Ambulance organisation, London’s Air Ambulance Charity, asked my contact at the West Midlands Air Ambulance Service if I would be able to produce yet another version of this video featuring the relevant graphic. As such, I created this video with this specification, once again indicating that this project was successful as multiple organisations have requested to use it.