Project Category: Premium Content Streaming, Educational
About: MasterClass offers members online courses taught by highly accomplished professionals in their field. This class on leadership is taught by Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, and focuses on effective, ego-free, conscientious leadership principles.
Position: Senior Story Producer
I was with this project from filming through delivery as the story producer. On set, I took thorough notes to keep me organized in post while also offering real-time feedback to the team on set to ensure we had the best takes of everything we might need once I got into the bay. Willink's class was new territory for MasterClass as it involved a multi-cam setting with a cast of students in addition to Jocko. In Premiere Pro I selected out class topics, made story cuts of segments, and worked closely with the editor to follow the specific MasterClass format. This included paper cuts for the client, and timeline cuts for the editor. I also sourced archival footage of both Jocko and military operations, taking great care to use only footage factually accurate for the time and places referenced in his stories. Additionally, the post process with MasterClass involves a test audience beta phase, in addition to the normal rough, fine, final deliveries which was a very insightful round. I also wrote bridging narration and directed talent in the final VO session.
Production Secret: Two for one
MasterClass also offers premium content to their enterprise clients, which is the corporate application of their courses. As they were getting through the edit with us, they decided this class would be a good opportunity to offer a full-length course to their enterprise clients rather than break the class up into sections as they do on their standard membership. During fine cut phase, we embarked on simultaneously delivering two versions of this class: one full-length, and one chaptered. To keep the full-length version engaging and appropriately timed, we had to do some cutting and story finessing for the new package. Delivering two versions at the same time was a unique challenge, and required extreme organisation, attention to detail, and abundant communication across the team of AEs, Editors, and QC. In the end, both versions tested well in Beta.
