Lots of people in the production industry are complaining about the rise of UGC (user-generated content) when they should in fact be welcoming it as the biggest catalyst for the increased use of video since the birth of the world wide web. There’s also plenty of room for creative companies to add value to user-generated content itself.

Our new friends at American Express wanted to reinforce the company’s “win” philosophy for a big conference. They wanted to capture “live” the successes of its sales team as they occurred but the problem was no sensible budget could afford to send camera teams to each of 14 markets for three months to wait for the golden moments.

American Express worked with Fullrange Media to develop a “diary room” approach where team members could self-record entries as and when they had achieved a sales success. Low-cost standard-definition Sony miniDV cameras were sent out across Europe and a web-based instruction video was produced to help people record the best possible entries. Point 1 where our expertise was able to add value to the production of user-generated content: helping explain how to use the kit properly, as well as some of the fundamentals of how to record a good clear video diary entry (there’s a wealth of this sort of thing on the Guardian website from their supplement on Making Video).

The completed tapes were then collated, formated and edited at Oakslade Studios: point two where we were able to really enhance the work the teams had done. By taking the teams’ fantastically raw, natural responses and weaving them together to tell a consistent story we were able to create a powerful and engaging end film which gave American Express a bigger bang for their buck than anything we could have shot entirely ourselves. Audiences who are used to online video are happy to overlook even the most dire technical barriers - so the standard definition source footage wasn’t a problem, especially once a consistent look and feel was added by motion graphics and idents.

And the conference delegates applauded every entry - why wouldn’t they, after all it was their peers who they were applauding (albeit whose efforts we’d enhanced and shaped into being ‘on-message’). Peer-group learning using film - 1. Shiny indulgence of a production company that wishes it was making TV ads - 0.