Industrial light &
corporate magic

When GM’s Factory ZERO needed a Skilled Trades Day spotlight, I took on the creative direction for a feature on one of their standout engineering team leads, the one and only Jeffrey Thompson.

I started with over an hour of interview footage and a few short reels of B-roll…but the interview had technical issues (think soft focus and camera wobble).

To work around it, I leaned into stylized editing with Adobe Premiere Pro: sharp, clean B-roll and an ‘80s-style montage edit complete with motivational soundtrack. It had personality, momentum, and a clear narrative arc. I call it the “Miami Vice Cut”, which you can watch here.

That first version? A hit with my direct team. But corporate comms asked for something more tech-forward. So I rescored it with a grittier, industrial tone – what I call the “Trent Reznor Cut,” viewable here. This included a new title screen sequence and an actionable end sequence to wrap it up.

The third and final cut was delivered after further feedback from Comms, which suggested using a more corporate-friendly music track, fine-tuned color correction, and adjusted lower-thirds titling animation.

This project spanned creative direction, editorial triage, and stakeholder alignment across three very different tones. The result? A corporate video that manages to feel cinematic, grounded, and aligned with GM’s evolving brand voice.

Special thanks to Ryan Schreiber, Laryssa Hulcio, and Jeffrey Thompson for making this happen!

P.S. – We also came up with an article version of this interview to post on Skilled Trades Day with the GM News team.

Scroll down to watch the final cut of the GM Skilled Trades video below, and check out screencaps in the photo gallery.