Truescape are visualization experts. They work across a variety of industries, including mining, solar, wind, hydro oil and gas. Their clients are some of the biggest companies in the world, managing some of the largest infrastructure projects on the planet. Based out of Christchurch, New Zealand, they’re in growth mode, with offices in US, Canada and Australia.
VP of Production - Kevin Simons - is at the epicenter of the solutions they produce for clients. “We present facts, which are used to inform stakeholders and keep projects moving. We typically do this with video, where content is created with a mix of deep industry experience and close client collaboration. There is a clear workflow, with sign-off required at each stage of the journey. There’s no room for error.”
All projects begin with a brief. “We need to understand the intent of the video, key messages, audience, and we do this in conjunction with the project management and creative teams.” Armed with that information, they develop scripts which are sent to the clients for review and approval, and storyboards follow after that. “Once the script and the storyboard are confirmed, the video enters production, replete with animated content and professional voice over.”
It’s at this point that they need to start soliciting client feedback on the first cut of the video.
Historically, the review process could be onerous to say the least. They’d have to deliver a version of the video via FTP, then they’d download and view, hopefully having the right codecs installed at their end. Then feedback would come through via email with many bullet points. And then these documents would then be sent round the organizations and invariably there’d be separate threads, and without fail some stakeholder would be omitted. Reconciling all that feedback - some of it contradictory - was painful and time consuming.
Kevin had prior experience using Wipster at another company, and knew it could help bring about a stepped change in efficiency.
“Our clients love Wipster. They don’t need to sign-up or login and they can just annotate
comments directly on the video rather than trying to describe what they were referring to. And that ensures that all the commenting is in one place for us to check-off. And Wipster’s Version Control and Side-by-side comparison are really helpful when you can sometimes end up with over 20 iterations of a video.”
Kevin also likes the fact it integrates with over key third party tools they use, including editing and effects tools Premiere Pro, After Effects (Adobe Creative Cloud) and Truescape's hosting solution Wistia.
And the overall impact on Truescape? “It’s a bit of a side-effect, but it helps us understand the structure of some of our client’s organizations. They may have 100,000 employees, and we are talking to a handful who are the main decision makers.” But the most substantial benefit has been the time saving. “There’s time saving for us on the production side with internal review, but the biggest savings come from the client interactions. Due to the nature of our clients and the projects, they can progress in a non-linear fashion, with some projects spanning multiple years. As an aside, it’s been a useful archive for us to retrieve historic projects when required.”
If you’d like to find out more about how Wipster can help streamline your video production process, then give Wipster a call. And if you’re after a cutting edge visualization expert, then look no further than Truescape.
Wipster Content Team