Director's Message: Addressing Financial Discrimination & Racial Equity
At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we’re striving to build a stronger nation through racial and economic equity.
The goal of creating this video was to shine light on the importance of addressing financial discrimination and racial equity. This topic touches many of our lives. Dave Uejio, the Bureau’s Acting Director, wanted to share his personal story and how his family has been impacted by some of the challenges we still face today.
This video was entirely produced in-house and designed from scratch by the Design & Development team at the CFPB.
The Creative Process
Creative Consult: Stakeholders asked the internal video production team to create a video to share Dave Uejio's personal story and highlight the Bureau's ongoing commitment to address financial discrimination and racial equity.
Script: The video team and stakeholders worked together to develop a concept and write the script. It was important to deliver this message around Dave's personal story. After several iterations and feedback, the video team had a simple script to work with and the stakeholders asked them to "make it pop." They wanted this to be something special.
Designing: The main challenge was designing something more engaging than a typical "talking head" video. Especially considering this was a tight turnaround and they didn't have any footage, music, graphics or photos to edit with. The solution came in the creative execution of developing a historical documentary look and feel. This included but wasn't limited to finding compelling stock b-roll, historical photos, making editing decisions, animation, effects, and other overlays. Each design decision and stylistic flourish is considered fairly unique by many government video standards, but the stakeholders wanted a video that reflected the authenticity and heart of the Dave's true story.
Footage: The video team filmed the Dave outside the CFPB headquarters building in Washington, DC. It was challenging to film and record outside in the center of a busy city. The team struggled with sirens, changing light conditions, wind and more- but the end result turned out clean and professional looking. The video producer and director decided to film Dave sitting down for a more casual and intimate composition. They also asked Dave for old family photos, licensed historical footage, found accurate redlining maps, and other elements to add to add visual effects to the video.
Motion Graphics / Editing: The motion graphics designer used a combination of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects to create the 'parallax effect' to bring the family photos to life. The video team also paired footage with film overlays, lens flares, stuttering frame rates, and effects to enhance the visual appeal. One subtle example of enhancing the emotion style is blending the crowd from 1968 to the crowd of 2020 shown at 1:10. Once the editor put all these pieces together, every clip was color balanced and graded for a consistent look. These animated elements and editing techniques contributed to elevating this video beyond the stakeholders' original expectations.
Mixing / Sound Design: Finally, the team used Adobe Audition to edit and mix Dave's audio, multiple music tracks, and sound effects. The final mastered mix truly brings the story to life.
Distribution: The video has been shown at high profile speaking engagements, shared with industry partners, distributed online, and is live on the CFPB's Striving for Equity page.
