Entertainment Producer Creates New Videos for DoD Corrosion Office

Corrosion Awareness Video #1 Will Premiere at 2007 Tri-Service
Corrosion Conference

By Cynthia Greenwood

Playing emcee for In Focus: The War on Corrosion, John Farrentine interviews Daniel J. Dunmire, who leads the DoD Corrosion Office, during the red carpet segment. Photo by Cynthia Greenwood, CorrDefense.

What is corrosion? How do you stop it from pushing DoD's weapon and infrastructure systems into decline? These are tough questions, even for experts. But more important, how does a behemoth government agency like DoD encourage Congress and the public to learn more about its efforts to prevent corrosion?

Last year the DoD Corrosion Office looked for a partner to help tackle these challenges. Finding a good one wouldn't be easy. It meant searching outside the military industrial establishment for a veteran, versatile storyteller. So the agency looked inside the entertainment industry.

To bring their story to the public, DoD Corrosion officials found a heavy-hitter in Bruno White Entertainment. Sporting an A-list of clients, Bruno White creates stories for one of the largest entertainment producers in the world. The company is based in Kissimmee, Florida, near Orlando. (See "Bruno White Entertainment Remains Versatile in a Competitive Marketplace.") "Few people in the entertainment industry tell stories better than Bruno White," said Daniel J. Dunmire, who directs the DoD Corrosion Office and serves as executive producer of the video production effort. "They turned out to be exactly what we needed to develop our corrosion awareness videos."

Shining Lights and Camera on a Dry Subject

Bruno White Entertainment began working for the DoD Corrosion Office in 2007. As partners, the two organizations are producing two videos that relate how DoD is waging war against corrosion. "This first video is for the public, and it needs to be in terms the layman can understand and also be entertaining for the corrosion professional," said Lorri Berglund, executive vice president at Bruno White Entertainment.

John Farrentine interviews Richard Kinzie, DoD Corrosion Policy Consultant, during videotaping of  In Focus: The War on Corrosion. Photo by Cynthia Greenwood, CorrDefense.

But to the non-expert, corrosion can be a very dry subject. "We're trying to make the introductory video as tight as possible, using Saturday Night Live-style newsroom sketches, humor, and techniques like animation," said Dunmire. "The 12 types of corrosion, for example, are explained in a very funny format. You'll see influences from other shows like Entertainment Tonight and the pre-show, red-carpet interviews at the Academy Awards."

"We started out with a script that was highly humorous, but we toned it down to a medium-level of humor," Berglund recalled. "It was a challenge to get across lots of information about corrosion prevention, while also adding an element of humor and entertainment." Bruno White produced the first 14-minute video earlier this spring. The company shot a full day in each of the following locations: the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Carderock Division in West Bethesda, Maryland; the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee; at the NACE International annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee; and at the headquarters of Bruno White Entertainment.

After DoD approves it, the first video—titled In Focus: The War on Corrosion—should be finished in time for public distribution in August. "We will premier the video to corrosion experts in the military and industry at the Tri-Service Corrosion Conference in December," Dunmire said.

The DoD Corrosion Office will also provide a full DVD version of the video that will premier at the Tri-Service Corrosion Conference in December, produce 2,000 copies, and distribute them to members of Congress and their key staff. Copies on DVD also will be distributed at the December Tri-Service meeting. Starting in December, the public can download a four-minute segment of the video from the DoD Corrosion Exchange Web site (www.dodcorrosionexhange.org soon to be www.corrdefense.gov).

Second Video Will Focus on the Science of Corrosion

Producers at Bruno White Entertainment videotape John Farrentine, emcee/talent for Bruno White, and Tony Keane, NACE International executive director, for a new DoD corrosion awareness video. Shown from left: Stacey Cook, production manager, Lorri Berglund, executive vice president, and Steve Callens, camera operator. Photo by Cynthia Greenwood, CorrDefense.

The DoD's second corrosion video will contain more advanced subject matter, for use on a new DoD Corrosion Learning Module that NACE International is developing. "This video will give high school and college students and DoD employees lessons in the science of corrosion," explained Dunmire.

"In the second video we'll use techniques such as time-lapse photography to show what happens when aluminum corrodes, for instance," Dunmire said. "We'll show how the metal gets thicker and weaker and how you can mitigate this type of corrosion. We hope that our first 14-minute corrosion awareness video will be a teaser to this more advanced video on corrosion." The second video will go into production in September 2007 and will be distributed in the summer of 2008, Dunmire said.

DoD and Bruno White Lay Groundwork for a Third Project

The DoD Corrosion Office and Bruno White Entertainment are making plans to produce a video corrosion training game for release on DVD in 2008, along with Pine Technical College, a two-year college in Pine City, Minnesota, funded by the Congress as a special interest item.

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