Designing a top notch studio for Honeywell
Our relationship with Honeywell goes back a long time. Around ten years ago, we were contacted by a sales representative looking to put together a series of videos that outlined the technical specifications of new Honeywell equipment. These videos were designed to be used by internal sales people, so they would be fully aware of the sophisticated offerings of this very important (and niche) equipment. Items like pressure valves that are used in petro-chemical operations that measure temperatures in the Kelvin range and pressures in the hundreds of PSI. Of course we can’t go into any specific detail, and honestly even if we wanted to, this is very technical stuff that we have only a lay-person’s understanding of to begin with. But we loved this project work, as one of our favorite elements of communication is making sure information is technically accurate and very specific.
A quintessential madpot output of our time with Honeywell; one of the members of our crew who was with us on a shoot at Honeywell's corrosion lab found such inspiration from our day filming in labs that he transitioned his career into lab work. Any time we bring people together and they create something new- that is when madpot is at peak.
Our work with Honeywell evolved to offer meeting and presentation support of executives who needed to deliver professional but simple videos to a global audience. These were fairly standard operations, but most importantly having us there to make sure everything was optimized behind the camera helped the executives feel at ease and confident in front of the camera.
When the pandemic accelerated the need for video communication, Honeywell reached out to elicit our consultation on designing a studio that would offer professional polish, but that was user friendly enough for their internal staff to be able to operate themselves. As much as they loved us coming out to set up and operate streams ourselves, the sheer volume and spontaneous need for high quality video conferencing required Honeywell to have their own top notch set up. For a company with the clout of Honeywell, a simple webcam on a standard issue laptop would not do, they needed something professional. However, the gear also needed to be easy enough to operate that just about anyone, with minimal training, would feel confident in operating the equipment themselves and most importantly, delivering the message they needed to deliver on camera. This is a format I believe in - making video digestible by teaching clients how to create high quality content on their own when possible. I never want my clients to be tethered to me as a gate keeper for their content opportunities.
Enter the studio project.
There was a large office storage area around 10’x20’ that was the perfect location to house the studio. The madpot team worked with Honeywell’s internal communication team to understand who would be using the studio, how often they would be using it, and how they would be interfacing with the technology. From there we provided turnkey designs on the space and purchased all gear; including professional cameras, dual confidence monitor setup, a simple HD switcher, countdown timer, teleprompter, and a “studio computer” with all of the requisite software needed to pull off simple livestream/video conferencing. We included a green screen and a simple “in person” set up to record two person interviews, and even included a simple production makeup kit and mirror so talent would look and feel their best going in to a broadcast.
The studio is still in operation to this day, and other offices have explored integrating livestream studios into their offices as well. Check out BTS pics from that pandemic-era installation.
