Your kids may be watching Khan Academy math lessons at home, you may have watched every single episode of Robin Roberts on Masterclass this weekend, or you may have watched social media videos on Facebook to find out what the latest COVID stats are in your area. But who makes all those videos that you watch, to learn critical new skills or find out important information?

The answer is: Digital Media Workers. And in the last 3 months, Digital Media Workers have been matched to 1,000 gigs through CreatorUp, with our platform on track to match workers to 10,000 gigs since January of last year.

During COVID – innovation and creativity have empowered us to grow. As shelter in place took effect in early March – I looked our team in the eyes (virtually – from my 2×2 apartment office in Los Angeles) and said – we’re not only going to get through this as a company, we’re going to help everyone else’s company get through this too. So let’s make the plan together.

Production teams came together and identified remote production solutions that would empower us to continue to shoot videos remotely and safely, empowering our partners to continue to serve their audiences with video content critical to their business. These video solutions included everything from learning videos, to marketing videos, to livestreams of workshops and conferences.

Our technology and product team worked closely with our marketing team to update our products and website to make sure that we were solving for the biggest challenges our partners were having.

These solutions included new products that we saw the market needed to get back to work, like live online solutions empowering schools and businesses to livestream or VR live-streaming to help support remote factory visits.

Our sales team kicked in to gear to get the message out to every single one of our partners that we were there to support them – and that the work would not stop.
True to our DNA as a creative and learning company – we got creative and innovated, taught each other and others quickly, and stepped on the gas. We even found ways to allow our clients to get on set without being on set through our remote livestream solutions like Sling Studio.

Hear what our production teams have to say about this new method of collaborative video creation. A producer Christy Mama says, “Sling Studio has changed the entire production process for the better. We have the capabilities to monitor footage and audio from a remote location.

These features remove any boundaries on the kind of content we can produce and pushes our creativity beyond limits. In addition, clients are able to comment during the shoot no matter where they are in the world. They can even provide live feedback that we can apply on the spot. It is changing the production game!”
Followed by a director of photography Alex Tafreshi – “It makes our creativity a lot more fluid.” Here are just a few of the cool new things that virtual on set participation enables:

• With camera and audio features, we have the capability to monitor image and sound enabling us to deliver the same high-quality production with a small crew at remote locations
• YouTube commenting allows for remote feedback from partners.
• The live You-Tube link can be set-up prior to the shoot day to prepare partners and other users for the production

As COVID emerged as a global economic earthquake, what started out as a speed bump for video creation when spaces shut down, turned into slingshot for the digital media world as we help our clients soar back into the world virtually with video.