The Road Ahead

Sting Marketing is a design firm in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was first hired by them as a graphic designer to create car dealership print ads in 2011. Since that time we have collaborated on video projects for most of their clients. In 2015 Duke Energy rolled out a new corporate “road map” for the future. It was a document meant to bring the company together under CEO Lynn Good’s direction. In the video below she outlines Duke’s purpose, vision, priorities and values.

Directing a piece of this importance for the largest electric utility in the United States was a privilege. On behalf of Sting Marketing, and overseen by producer Hendrik van Vuuren we worked closely with Duke’s creative team. The graphics were created by one of Duke’s in-house designers. They provided directions for how to animate the type. The additional footage of external locations was stock that came from the previous Duke Energy shoots. We went through at least nine iterations of this seven-minute piece before it was released to the thousands of Duke employees worldwide.

The Road Ahead document is now public and has been in effect for two years. Working with Lynn and the staff from Duke Energy went flawlessly. To have a smooth shoot day we carted all equipment into the Duke Energy Building and set up the day before. We pulled out all our tricks. A parallax slider, an eight foot jib, four camera angles and a high-quality lavalier mic pack. We could not use a boom because of how Duke creatives wanted to stage the scene. The boom would have been in the shot.

It all went better than I expected. Lynn delivered the memorized script in only two takes, with a consistent and effective delivery each time. This piece was delivered on time and represents our best efforts for one of the largest employers in the region.