Training for Miners

Video Sample

Miners’ Rights and Responsibilities

Calif. Dept. of Industrial Relations, 14 Minutes

Working in a mine, quarry or tunnel can be dangerous, so there are numerous safety procedures, rules, regulations and laws in place to protect the workers. Even after training the workers go through refresher courses to keep up their safety skills. Video is a great training tool, but once your program starts to be the same age as the people you’re training, it’s time to refresh it.

This was the situation for the California Department of Industrial Relations Division of Occupational Safety and Health, so they hired eImage to freshen up their 20-year-old program with new footage. A new script was not in the budget since the old one was deemed good enough.

But what the client really wanted was an episode of Discovery Channel’s Gold Rush, the miners’ favorite program!

Building a new house on an old foundation always presents limits and in this case our limitation was the dry, didactic script from 1998 which we had to use. We changed a few sentences at the opening and closing, chose a booming narrator’s voice, laid in powerful music and combined it with fantastic drone footage by Daniel Gamburg. The final product was a DVD, so to go above-and-beyond the call of duty, we mixed the sound in full 5-channel surround sound. When seen on a big screen with a THX-certified sound system–the way we work in our edit room–the program definitely packs a punch and the client was delighted.

All this was done on a tight budget since the original RFP stipulated the job will go to the lowest qualified bidder. To get the job we had to keep it lean, so we shot with a 2-person crew.

We also produced a Spanish-narrated version of this program and a companion Low Voltage Safety program, in English and in Spanish.

July 2019 update:

The Colorado School of Mines asked for permission to use this program as part of their curriculum. It’s a big deal because in the world of mining, the Colorado School is the very best. Our client is thrilled!

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