Gretchen Nygaard Smith
Creative Writing | Film | Digital Marketing
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was only 18 months old. Although I don’t know any different, living with diabetes is challenging. There are countless factors that affect my blood sugar and health, and things are always changing, so I constantly need to adapt.
I’ve had 22 years of experience living with diabetes. But there are other people who have recently been diagnosed with diabetes, who don’t know where to find resources to help with their diabetes, or whose doctors don’t work with them to develop a healthy lifestyle that works with diabetes. There have been times when I “winged it” with my diabetes, and other times I have tried to understand the numbers and trends and stayed on top of nutrition and exercise. When I am diligent with living a healthy lifestyle and keeping track of my diabetes, I simply feel better! I want every diabetic to have the tools to feel as optimal as they can, too.
For this project, I worked with AboveDiabetes, a diabetic telehealth practice that words with diabetics to educate them on how diabetes really works and how nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle can benefit rather than hinder people who live with diabetes. I created four educational videos that help explain what diabetes is and how it is affected by nutrition and exercise.
AboveDiabetes will use these videos not only to supplement and support their patients’ diabetes education, but also as marketing videos to help teach and serve a larger audience of people who want to learn more and take charge of their diabetes. My hope in creating these videos is that more diabetics will learn how to thrive with diabetes.
The ideas, scripts, storyboards, and shot lists for all four videos were created by me, with some help from my doctors. The filming and editing was also done solely by me. Although this was a lot of work to coordinate and organize everything by myself, especially on the day of the shoot, I am grateful for the practice and experience it gave me with all the tools and equipment that are used in video production. The pre-production materials are attached below.