Solution #142
Educating the Therapists
Featuring: Blast Injuries: Real Wounds. Real People. Real Recovery.
Client: Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA)
The Idea:
The Veterans Benefits Administration wanted to create a video to train vocational rehabilitation counselors for treating veterans who have suffered from blast injuries. The video had to cover the physical, emotional and rehabilitation needs of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with these injuries.
The Challenge:
The video needed to tell the stories of returning veterans and follow them through the process of recovery. It needed to balance expert advice and insight into the injuries with the veterans' personal experiences, all while training vocational rehabilitation counselors how to handle veterans with these types of injuries. The documentary-style video required an extended amount of time for pre-production. This year-long project included extensive research, pre-interviews, expert selection, and production preparation. It also included managing three separate regions for production: the Washington DC metropolitan area; South Bend, Indiana; and Denver, Colorado.
The Solution:
Video Solutions created a one-hour video that follows four injured veterans through three main phases of their journey-Acute Care, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration. The video begins with clips from interviews with all four wounded veterans telling their stories. Their stories were woven together to tell how a wounded Soldier or Marine is treated from the moment of impact through their immediate medical treatment until they return to the United States. This section of the video is cut together with war footage and personal photos for a touch of realism. Once the first section concludes, an on-screen host appears with a panel of experts. She interviews the experts about that portion of the journey. The advice in the expert sections is critical for the training portion of the video. The other two sections follow the same format.
Video Solutions filmed in three regions to gather the images required to show the veterans' progress through the various stages of recovery and reintegration. The locations included military hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, prosthetics, and visits with the veterans in their homes.
The video was distributed on the Veteran's Administration Television Network and packaged and sent to vocation rehabilitation counselors throughout the VBA.