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Since I can remember,¹ I’ve been a huge movie and TV fan. Visual storytelling and media has always been a personal passion.

And given my career in talent attraction and acquisition, it makes sense I co-founded Stories Inc., a video production company with a talent twist (we uncover employee experiences for employer branding and internal communications).

I​​t is an incredible time to be a screen media enthusiast! Maybe I’m seeking out more courageous and ambitious films and TV shows.² But, I’ve seen tons of creative risks pay off in the art I watch lately. Perhaps that’s due to new cinematic techniques and tech innovations, the re-imagining of how stories can be created and consumed, our collective heightened expectations as an audience… or all of the above.

It’s shown up in our work at Stories as well. It’s been a joy to see our production team exceed client expectations and level up creatively as we master new techniques and tackle new challenges.

These two recent Stories Inc. marketing projects are examples of us inspired by film, having fun and experimenting with different ways to think about employer brand video production. 

Applying Big-Screen Cinematic Techniques in Employer Branding

More than ever, I’m aware and in awe of all the pieces that come together and create beautiful films. That’s one reason I love the Academy Awards—specific artistic disciplines like cinematography, editing, and music are recognized and celebrated. And, it all leads up to the big shebang, when it all came together: Best Picture.

In honor of the Oscars this month, we quickly edited together some of our most perspective-shifting b-roll. Set to a dramatic soundtrack, this short video is a nod to some of the big-screen techniques—such as extreme close-ups, wide landscape shots, and dynamic movement—that we also apply in our employer branding videos. We use these techniques to transport candidates into a work environment, an important way to get them picturing themselves at that company, with that team, in that job. 

Watch Our Cinematic B-Roll Homage to Hollywood Films

Behind-the-Scenes Video Production for Loews Hotels

I’ve always loved learning about the making of the masterpiece. So, we decided to take our audience along for a traditional interview day with us!

While our technical and creative expertise is essential to creating visually compelling video libraries, the Stories Inc. team also has other important jobs to do while we’re filming at a client workplace. We deliver a fantastic experience for “the talent” (literally: employee and leader storytellers). Our team connects with our storytellers and naturally uncover meaningful stories about their real workplace experiences. We strike a balance, keeping it both conversational and real while a camera’s rolling. 

Watch our work in action.

This Behind the Scenes video does two things: 

• It brings you along with us, our own day-in-the-life! You’ll see our video production process firsthand.
• It doubles as a client deliverable, a coming soon preview for our client Loews Hotels. They used this video to prep their audience for an employer brand series that premiered a few weeks later.

Ultimately, we are what we’re inspired by. The Stories team infuses cinematic storytelling in our employer branding and talent attraction video production projects. It was fun to highlight our expertise in two different ways, both showing how we use high-fidelity video production to bring employee stories to life.

1. *One of my earliest memories is watching a bootleg copy of Footloose’s opening scene, over and over. How did that one leg turn all the way around? I still don’t know. ↩︎
2. No shade to Footloose, especially Kevin B. ↩︎