As we settle into spring let’s have a look back at winter and what was a season full of celebrations, short days (let’s be honest) and a lot of different, interesting and thought-provoking projects, with some ideas that might save you money!
Let’s find out what we got up to.
While we work with a great mix of new and old clients, let’s start this update with a project we’ve been doing for a very long time!
Every year we help one of our clients put on an event celebrating teams and individuals who go above and beyond within their organisation.
The scope of this project changes a little every year, this time we were tasked with creating media to be played at the event, which involved recording piece to cameras over Microsoft Teams.
Here we provide a cost-effective alternative to creating this style of video in person, that still utilises our 35+ years of experience.
We first organised all of the interviewees and their record times, then during the recordings we help them set-up their shot, we direct, we do multiple takes – it’s a proper shoot without having us physically in the room.
In the edit suite, we then got to work making the videos look and sound as good as they possibly could, also adding a load of information in the form of captions, graphics and animation.
The event went without a hitch and our client was very happy 🙂
Now looking forward to the next one!
We were off to the Emirates Stadium this winter, to film the Broadcast Sport Summit, some of us were more excited about it than others (Nick being an Arsenal supporter and Chris being a Manchester United supporter).
We were there on a bright and sunny day to film a sports leadership panel with a 2-camera set-up, so there would be a version available online for anyone who was unable to make it on the day.
We’ve spoken about this many times before, but we still think it is great advice worth sharing – filming your events extends the reach, effort and value for money of putting them on ten-fold.
Another one of our long-standing clients had a bit of an emergency this winter, they were celebrating their business’ 25th anniversary and needed a last-minute photographer.
We were called the night before, but swung into action, there was no way we were going to let them down and the very next day our photographer Conn, was at the event capturing the celebration.
Our client was so happy with the photos they sent the following:
“I just wanted to say thank you again for stepping in and making sure our event was covered off photography-wise. I really appreciated your help in drafting Conn in, he was brilliant, the photos are great.”
We’ve already mentioned one way of making your money go further in this update, but another great way is updating older videos, rather than making new ones (when possible).
Obviously, there is always a place for fresh media, but if your older video is still fit for purpose barring a change of logo, a new tag line, or anything else along those lines, then it can be a lot more cost-effective to update the older video.
Some of our clients took advantage of this over winter and had us updating older videos made by us and sometimes made by other companies.
One being a 3D animation (which can be very expensive to produce), which only needed a logo and text change to bring it up to date.
Another video needed a scene updating, including captions and a line of voice over. Luckily we made this one so we could get back in touch with the original voice over artist to record the new line and then we changed the associated captions.
…And another video needed a location change – initially we made an Explainer style animation to demonstrate how to stay safe in London, as attendees were arriving for a global conference, which had to be updated for the this years’ location, Barcelona.
Okay, we promise that this is the last money saving tip for this post, but this is a great example of making your money go further.
In this project we created 4 versions of the same video, all with different casting, to represent different regions of the world.
We were then tasked to create over 50 fully translated versions (including captions and the recording of a native speaker for each voice over) using the video that best suited the region we were translating for.
That way the video could be personalised for many different countries, rather than filming a new video for each one.
This is a really smart way to extend the reach of your video and make the cost of producing it in the first place go much further.
We are delighted to say that we have now completed most of the translations and the client is so happy that they have asked for more!
As you can see, winter has kept us very busy and we still haven’t mentioned other projects like editing a load of self-shot media, helping to create a physical book for our client’s new starters and how proud we are to play our part in helping our clients produce videos for International Women’s Day and International Day Against Racism.
So, we’ll leave it here; we hope your winter was just as prosperous, bring on the warm weather!
