Another week, another project focus- Video Training

This week, we take a look at a recent video training project delivered for Weber, a long-standing client of ours here at Turps Film. Weber is part of the global brand, Saint-Gobain, and it specialises in building materials for the façade of buildings, construction mortars, flooring systems and tile fixing. They’re well established within the construction sector and are passionate advocates for the power of video when it comes to their marketing, internal communications and people training.

Weber recently came to us looking for a video training solution to upskill their sales and marketing department but due to the ongoing pandemic, they wanted this to take the form of a video.  Having led several workshops focused on teaching the basics of video production – this was certainly a challenge we were well-equipped and up for!

When carrying out workshops in person, we can ask each participant what topics they’re keen to learn more about and structure the workshop to fit their specific needs.  When planning our video for Weber, we had to decide on the most important topics to cover to make the training as impactful and useful as possible, whilst keeping the material accessible and most importantly, engaging. When relying on team members to undertake this video training themselves, engaging content is a big factor in ensuring they’ll see it through to completion.

After a few chats with the Weber communications team, we’d highlighted a few key areas that Weber staff could create video content for, should they have the skills to do so following adequate video training. This is an area we’re being asked about more and more as the COVID-19 pandemic rumbles on, and we’ve recently collaborated with the North East Chamber of Commerce to provide a members-only webinar to educate fellow businesses on this very topic.

In Weber’s case, typical scenarios that would require a team member to capture their own footage would include showcasing best practice for using Weber products, covering a specific project and capturing a testimonial.  All three scenarios could even be covered in one visit.  For example, a salesperson could visit a site where Weber products are being used and capture a case study from the customer, then follow the application process of the products according to best practice guidelines. Or they could need a more personalised approach for sales that offers that ‘in-person’ experience, despite very few of us being able to leave our houses right now!

To enable the Weber team to produce all of the above, we had to explain how to set up equipment correctly, frame and conduct a successful interview, and finally capture engaging and relevant cutaways.

The video training programme covered the following:

  • Setting up your device
  • Stabilising the image
  • Content + “B-roll”
  • Framing
  • Lighting
  • Sound
  • Interview Technique
  • Interview Questions
  • Planning
  • The structure of a case study, tutorial and product demo.

With the above skills, a person would be able to create engaging video content for their audience.  So, we just had to make sure each point was covered in-depth and made relevant to a Weber audience.

By understanding the above skills, the team could also approach:

  • Social media video
  • Employee feedback/testimonials
  • Health and Safety announcements
  • Product comparisons
  • Event video
  • Company memos

We scoured through our entire back catalogue of video content created for Weber over the past 7 years and pulled relevant reference clips to help articulate key points.  We grabbed reference video from product promos, tutorials, case studies, interviews, site trials, and showcased behind the scenes content to help explain how certain concepts are put into practice.

Filmmaking can be hard, but it can also be a tremendous amount of fun and is a fantastic way of building rapport with your clients.  By having a customer sit down and discuss why they love working with you/love your product/love your service, you’re creating an opportunity for introspection which can help your partnership grow.  By upskilling your staff, you have access to a large pool of immediately accessible talent to capture any key moments that you may want to share, either on your website, via social media or with other colleagues or clients, meaning no missed opportunities and a team of roving amateur film-makers looking to make the most of their new-found skills.


The video training was hugely useful to the team and we received this testimonial from Weber upon successful completion of the project:
“When we asked Turps Film to produce this training video we didn’t plan on adding Videographer, Director, Producer to our field sales team’s job description, but in an ever digital age, video content is becoming more precious and we were hoping spontaneity would be key to some cracking footage.  By giving our team the basics in video production we hope to be able to produce more videos by professionally editing any suitable footage supplied into website, social media, training and exhibition content.

Turps Film was the obvious choice to create the training skills video as they are familiar with our business and products after producing many videos for Weber over the years, they also understood what we were hoping to achieve through the process.  The video has offered our business a key insight into producing simple and effective video content and feedback so far has been very positive!”

  • Dawn McKee, Communications Manager at Weber

If you’re looking to get more out of video and want to learn the ropes for yourself, check out our webinar with the NECC on 2nd December 2020 at 10 am, but should you miss the boat on that, do get in touch and we’ll see if we can help.