When a client of Scofield Digital Storytelling came to them for help producing a series of videos for an upcoming training event, it quickly became clear that this was no ordinary project. Scofield’s client, a national civil engineering firm, was well aware that training videos had plenty of potential to lull a roomful of employees to sleep before it taught them anything about their work. With that in mind, they wanted to shoot something more creative and tell a story, one full of humor that would be easily relatable to their employee base. Scofield brought Metonymy Media in and, after a bit of creative brainstorming, we suggested coming up with our own take on the awkward workplace mockumentary format made famous by The Office. The result of this super fun collaboration was a script written by us, which Scofield turned into a fully-produced three-part film series documenting the struggles of engineers trying to overcome the steep demands of a client and the shortsightedness of their well-meaning, but largely incompetent, boss.
When a large national insurance company sought to build an innovative experience in order to train their call center employees, it must have felt a bit like writing the plot to an Avengers film. This big bad was way too big for one agency alone to slay, and it was up to VisionThree, an Indianapolis-based experiential design firm, to build out the A-team. Metonymy Media was chosen as the writing component of the squad, which was also filled out with education experts, digital designers and developers, videographers and editors, and engineers to build something like a museum exhibit. The result? A series of interactive, video-driven games and activities to help customer service representatives display more empathy on their calls. In the process, we developed characters, concepted branching interactive stories, and wrote scripts for the final product.
UIndy has played an important role in the growth and development of Metonymy Media. As our founder’s alma mater, it has served as a great connection for sourcing interns, and we’ve found a great like-minded partner in the school’s English department. Flatteringly, we’ve also found many at UIndy to be big fans of what we’re doing, to the extent that we have managed to find work with three completely unrelated departments of the school. First, we were brought in by the school’s Admissions department to write for Inside UIndy, a magazine aimed at recruiting high school students. Next, the marketing department called on us for help in writing new content for each of the School of Arts and Science’s many departments. Finally, President Robert Manuel enlisted us to help tell the story of Vision 2030, his master plan for the school’s future, in a report for the school’s community and the city of Indianapolis at large.