I don’t often share videos on my blog, but last month I had the privilege of creating a video for Intermountain Medical Center, which is where I work, about a reformed salt shaker named Dash. When he realized the pain and suffering he was causing people by giving them high blood pressure and increasing their risk of stroke, he went on a crusade to rid the world of salt. After a run-in with the law for theft, he dedicated his life to increasing people’s awareness of the impact of a high sodium diet on their health.
Watch the video! It’ll make you LOL.
When I was given this assignment, I was contemplating a creative and funny way to introduce our new mascot that would explain his purpose and mission, while sticking to a pretty short and fast-moving video. After watching what seemed like a bazillion YouTube videos about salt, I got the idea of doing a silent film approach. I drafted up the script and bought all the props needed to make it happen. I even had to improvise to build an interrogation room with a single light in the center.
We had to operate under a tight timeline. I scheduled out the filming of the video and got all the actors to show up at their designated time in their specified location for the scene. We filmed the entire think in two hours on a Tuesday afternoon. Since the following day was May 1, the first day of Stroke Awareness Month, I had to edit the video and get it ready to debut the following day. Needless to say, it was a late night in front of the computer trying to get everything just right. I uploaded the video to our hospital’s YouTube channel at 2:30 am, then sent an email with the link to my colleagues so they could let me know if there were any changes that needed to be made before we launched it later that morning. Luckily, there were no additional changes so we made it happen.
Throughout the month, I had the opportunity of filming other videos featuring Dash, and I invite you to check them out.
– Dash brings awareness to stroke, one “stroke” at a time (a fun adventure at a local minigolf course)
– Dash does the Salt Shake for stroke awareness (which rivals the Harlem Shake)
We even did a series of postcards to show him at different venues and share the messages of stroke awareness. Here are a few of the post cards and images we shared.
At the end of the month, we needed to find a way to stop Dash, without leaving him hanging, or killing him off. So we decided to have him head off to another city with salt in the name (like Salt Lake City), so we put him on a plane to Saltville, Virginia. That last photo shoot included an afternoon at the Salt Lake International Airport where we got extra security clearance to grab some photos. It was a great campaign to be part of creating and I hope my readers get a kick out of the photo and video creativity behind this campaign.
~signed, Carltonaut
Carltonaut 