UF health inspire: moe ricks
Of all the video stories I’ve produced, this is one that best represents how I approach producing/storytelling. It’s one of the most viewed and shared videos in UF Health’s history, and it won a prestigious national 2020 Gold Telly Award and a national 2021 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Institutional Advancement (GIA) Gold Award. Simply said, this is what I do. Enjoy it, then I’ll explain how we made it.
How we made it: Behind the scenes
It started with a simple email from UF Health’s senior leaders: “Heard our transplant team’s plane had to make an emergency landing. Team never lost sight of the mission. Look into it.”
I did. I went full journalist. I started asking around, having off-camera interviews with members of our transplant team and surgeons. I asked Moe Ricks questions about his experience. And that’s when it hit me: this story isn’t about our transplant team’s plane striking a bird and making an emergency landing; that’s only the front door to this story. This story is about Moe’s resilience in the face of adversity and him using music therapeutically. This story is about UF Health creating an environment that allowed Moe to express himself in his moment of crisis. This story is about a different kind of healing. For me, it’s less about selling widgets and driving volume, and always about tapping into the human experience to form connections with people. If we do that well, the rest will take of itself.
I called my animator, videographer and creative director into my office—the walls of which were plastered with crude sketches and notes depicting my vision—and said we’ve got a unique and compelling story to tell. Call it our treatment meeting. As I pitched my vision, I played some stock tracks of ambient music in the background to set the mood. I started almost every sentence with, “Okay, picture this…” and “Ooh, what if we….” I made sound effects with my mouth. I gestured wildly with my hands. My team fed on the energy, and in return I fed on theirs. Soon everyone was starting sentences with, “Let’s try…” and “I bet we can do….” Beautiful magic unfolded: brainstorming without limits, not focusing on what wasn’t possible, but what was. You see, UF Health had never before produced a story like this, especially not one where the outcome wasn’t perfect or that didn’t try to drive volume to a specific service line. This was a different story, and it had to be told differently.
Here’s an example of what my team saw on my office walls:
During that treatment pitch meeting, as a team we refined the vision and plan. We did every ounce of this production internally (4 of us with limited gear and time). Thankfully, I wasn’t bogged down with a budget, hiring talent and crew, location agreements, etc., for this one, though I’ve done all that with other productions.
Our production plan contained these instructions and logistics:
Who I’d interview on camera and the questions I’d ask, as well as how we’d film those interviews using two cameras to capture wides and close-ups. The goal was to capture the facts, the expressions and the raw emotions.
How we’d capture Moe’s story from his Jacksonville recording studio. The set was key here; it had to declare “music studio” and “sound engineer.” It had to declare, well, Moe.
The metaphoric transitions that wiped or revealed text on screen between key segments of the story. We chose two specific transitions: one with birds taking off in flight; the other was Moe’s finger riding a volume slider.
The broll locations internally, locally and regionally (Gainesville Regional Airport; Moe’s hometown of Jacksonville where his family and studio reside, etc.). Hospital locations and instruments. The organ cooler. Etc.
Capturing the song recording in Moe’s hospital room and additional broll conveying the songwriting process with the artists. I wanted to see the pencil lead grind away on the paper as it scrawled out the lyrics … the musicians’ faces and eyes as they contemplated melody and structure, and their emotions during the performance. And then there was Moe in his hospital bed, hooked up to machines keeping him alive, mashing buttons and flipping switches, doing what he does with a smile on his face. To Moe, this wasn’t a hospital room; it became his studio, the place where he is his best self.
Sound design that would hold all this together. Things thumping, exploding and whirring at the right times. Music both ambient and unsure. Other times terrifying, driving and pulsing. Other times settling down and comforting. Airports. Cockpits. Engines. Pilots’ chatter. Hospital blips and blings. Bird chirps.
A post-production outline that would stitch this story together in editing:
Intro to Moe: who he is, what he does, what he values, and his medical condition. It was important to establish up front that this story was about Moe, the human being, and not about the greatness of UF Health. My brilliant creative director was instrumental in establishing this segment.
The bird strike and emergency landing. We needed to bring viewers into the actual plane, let them see the instruments and flashing emergency lights, let them feel the engine shake and sense the panic. I wanted viewers to read the frantic texts sent to loved ones. We created a bird strike animation to illustrate exactly what happened. I also wanted viewers to juxtapose this harrowing ordeal with the fact that Moe was on the operating table awaiting his new organs. We relied on parallelism here, which enhanced the drama. During the emergency landing sequence, I wanted viewers to feel the desperation and urgency, and ultimately, the failure to find another mode of transport.
Revealing the hard truth to Moe. Imagine walking into a patient’s surgical recovery room to tell him that the life-changing organs he thought he’d have transplanted never made it. We didn’t shy away from this part of the story. It was necessary to tell. We pieced it together through re-enactments and testimony. I wanted viewers to feel the pain and disappointment we all felt. This is a real human experience.
Transition to healing through music. The song, “Waiting.” Writing it. Describing it. Documenting the live recording process. I wanted viewers to feel a palpable lift here. Despite all that Moe had gone through, he hadn’t lost his true sense of identity, and if that’s intact, he could maintain the optimism necessary to be resilient and persevere. I wanted Moe to inspire viewers.
The importance of organ donation. Moe requested that we include this segment. And he was perfectly right in his conviction. Moe’s and thousands of others’ lives hang in the balance while they await a transplant. This part of the story had to be told in a way that could motivate you and me to become organ donors. (I don’t know if actual organ donation numbers increased after we released this story, but I know anecdotally from comments in social media people were inspired to become organ donors.)
A message of hope from our CEO. We try to depict our senior leaders as genuinely human as possible when we can, and having Mr. Jimenez summarize what we’d just watched and how it reflects the heart and soul of UF Health felt like the right way to position him in this piece.
Closing and resolution. We last encounter Moe and others dispensing words of eternal optimism and grace.
As of February 2021, here are some social media metrics:
60K people reached (above average for UF Health)
900 hours watched (way above average for UF Health)
19K story page views on UFHealth.org (way above average for UF Health)
This video is part of the University of Florida Health Inspire series, a storytelling initiative I began and currently direct. UF Health Inspire stories are meant to be special. These are unique stories that share an extraordinary achievement, that are highly produced and well promoted. A UF Health Inspire story must meet this criteria:
Must be a story that is primarily motivational and aspirational versus informational (i.e., not a story about a process improvement or quality of care award). This should be about a person or family who faced and persevered through a unique struggle.
Must focus on the human experience and human condition of healing in its various forms
Will feature the uncommon or extraordinary. We are focused on sharing a variety of different patient stories in different venues and places. Because of the added investment involved to produce and promote an Inspire story, we are looking for those stories that are truly extraordinary and carry that “wow” factor!
Will highlight conflict and tension, which resolve in a climactic ending
Capitalize on personal and professional experiences and expressions
Aren’t afraid to reveal failures, shortcomings or weaknesses
Empower people to adopt different perspectives by asking uncomfortable or challenging questions
Mobilize or catalyze change; inspire people to action