How we filmed the Samsung training videos

Samsung asked 9/8 Central to shoot a series of corporate training videos for their support centers. International companies like Samsung typically do not want to take many risks and create something too ambitious.

But when we had our first meeting they requested that we shoot a bank robbery scene. It's then I knew this project was going to be fun.

The entire series of videos are available on Vimeo.

The first order of business was figuring out they wanted to communicate and educate the Samsung employees. There are many ways of doing this but one thing that was important to me was to not shoot a typical "talking head" video.

So we pitched a concept to them of beginning with an introduction that was familiar and safe and then segueing into a narrative that illustrated what a Samsung employee should and should not do.

They loved the idea so we went for it. We collaborated with their creative team to come up with a list of five scenarios. 

While our writer was finalizing the script, our producer was finding talent for the client to approve, and I was scouting locations with our grip and camera department.

It was important to Samsung that we film as much as we could at their location. That wasn't a problem for the scenes at the cubicles other than it was a noisy working environment.

All the other scenes (except for the TV scenario) were shot at the Samsung showroom at the same location as the cubicles. Getting those locations to not look like a showroom and more like a real location took an amazing amount of work. Our set designer and crew did an amazing job!

Once the client signed off on script and talent for the corporate videos, all that was left was making movies. We shot for 3 days in multiple locations. On the last day we did the car scenes and shot in the home for the TV scenario.