Onboarding Opera
Lyric Opera of Chicago's HR department needed a creative refresh of their onboarding manual. They tasked me to adapt it to a more engaging format—it seemed only right to choose opera.
My Role
After discovering "We Got [You]!", the musical ad I'd produced for Tufts in 2018, Lyric Opera commissioned a similarly styled video they could show new hires in onboarding sessions. I wrote, directed, and edited.
The Challenge
With a combined full-time and part-time staff of 1000+ (including ticketing, marketing, sales, growth and strategy, educators, orchestra musicians, chorus members, stagehands, production and technical staff, stage management, administration, and ushers) alongside ever-changing sets and productions, Lyric's HR department carries a major responsibility to train new hires properly.
Sensing that new employees were not engaged by their tome of a handbook, they needed a substitute that would be as captivating as it was comprehensive.
Execution
I've loved opera since my grandparents accidentally introduced me to it at three years old when they put the wrong disc in their car CD player. Knowing that each new hire would share my passion for the medium that put Lyric on the map, I wrote a piece that stitched together spoofs of nine famous arias in a massive tour of the 11 floors of the opera house. Shots included multi-cam setups, drone footage, and integrated CGI.
But showing new hires around wasn't enough—we wanted them to feel like a member of the Lyric family. Luckily, directing non-actors (or, I should say, non-professional actors) is a specialty of mine. I rallied 10 department heads and 20+ vocalists to pull off the warmest welcome possible.
Results
Delivered a polished final product to be integrated into standard HR orientation material, improving engagement and garnering positive feedback from leadership
Reinvigorated working culture among existing departments that previously had been siloed
Proceeded to work as in-house video production intern for Lyric Opera
What I learned
This was an opportunity to create purpose-driven content that had a direct impact on a company's internal experience (as previously I had focused only on consumer-facing ads).
Managing execution end-to-end with (ambitiously) more moving pieces than I ever had managed before, the process stretched my abilities both as a writer and coordinating producer. Above all, this project strengthened my cross-functional collaboration—nothing unites people like singing together.