Having already filmed a corporate video with my friend during the summer of 2017 at Hampton Court Palace, I knew roughly what was needed to make a good video. I had a story in my mind that I needed to express through what I was filming. As we all know, in an ideal world, everything falls into place. The camera has a full battery, the lighting is perfect, there isn't too much background noise from customers, fridges or the air conditioners and my colleagues are all happy and willing to take part. And I also thought with me being approachable, friendly and talkative, I would be able to just go up to anyone and chat with them.
Oh, how wrong I was...
You'd think this would be easier than walking up to a cute girl that you like (or just any girl that you think that would actually talk to you) and saying to get her number. Turns out, that there isn't some magic line or set of words you can use to get people to talk in front of a camera for 2 minutes (or to get that cute girl's number). I think one of the challenges that I was facing, as I mentioned in my last post, was the fact that I had just returned to Canary Wharf from uni and not many people knew who I was or that I even existed (actually, this part wasn't much different to uni).
So there I was; camera in one hand, tripod in the other. Walking around the store trying to get people to be interviewed as a part of my video. Apart from the people that were happy and agreed to be filmed, when I approached people, I would get 1 of 3 answers.
1. The first would be a polite "No sorry, I don't want to be filmed". Fair enough, thanks for your time.
2. The second would be "Oh! What's that? A camera! Wow, aren't they really expensive? What are you doing here? Do you make the Christmas adverts? Will this be on TV?". No Dorris, you don't need to be a professional to buy a £500 camera.
3. The third is probably the worst. Being a mixture of both answers mentioned above, they lull you into a false sense of security and trust and just when you're not expecting it, they strike, like any pyramid scheme. Yes, Tai Lopez. I'm looking at you. The more people I approached, I found that they were interested in how big my lens was if you know what I mean 😉 (only kidding, no one has ever wondered...). "Wow, that's quite a professional setup you have! Must have cost you an arm and a leg!" Yes because I rolled up to you in a wheelchair... "What's the video about? Oh nice, that's really cool! You must get a lot of people that want to be in the video! Who? Me? Hang on, I know someone that would be good at this." They would then proceed to walk me around to people they thought would be good at talking for 2 minutes.
I'm pretty sure that I managed to get someone who had just started working at Canary Wharf to be in the video. That guy probably thought it was a compulsory thing that people had to do to start their job. If you or someone you know is about to start working at Waitrose Canary Wharf, then yes, it's a compulsory thing to do. Please come and see me.
In my defence, I did have a few people who I had talked to about the video that actually wanted to take part and create something (looking back, this might have also been to do with taking them away from actually doing their job stacking shelves or serving customers for 15, 20 or maybe 30 minutes at a time). Being honest, I think they could see the passion I had for filmmaking and content creation and they bought into the message that I wanted to get out about Partnership day.
These people were the epitome of what Partnership day was about, regardless of if they appeared in the video or not. I felt a connection between what the partners were saying and how they interacted with customers and the other partners. Everyone I approached listened intently to my idea and helped me build and develop this project. This first video started as my baby, a way for me to get more experience dealing with clients. But the more partners that bought into my vision, the idea transformed into a video about the people serving you at Waitrose. This was a video about the partners of Waitrose made by the partners of Waitrose.
The editing was definitely the easiest part of the project. From the managers I had interviewed, I had enough of a skeleton to build a video, a decent video at that. I didn't anticipate how popular within my branch that video would become. As I came into work over the next few weeks, my colleagues and managers were congratulating and thanking me for a video that I had initially thought was going to be a tough sell given my lack of interviewees.
I had managed to complete my first solo corporate video with a cheap plastic tripod, a mediocre microphone and a Canon 200D. Was it a perfect video? No. Looking back at it, I could have used my tripod in more shots or used a warp stabiliser in the shaky shots. I should have bought a tie clip microphone and not a directional mic. I should have chosen better locations without customer distractions. But none of that mattered. I had created a video that brought the store together and showed why people enjoyed working for Waitrose and Canary Wharf in particular. Going into the project, my managers and friends had 0 expectations from me and to have completely blown them out of the water has made my follow up videos difficult to make. I am always looking to one-up the last video. And that is how creatives should be working.
Over the last 2 years since that video, I have upgraded a lot of my equipment. Working my butt off (not in the literal sense, I still have a little bit of baby fat left...) to earn the next bit of tech that would help push my videos to the next level. In the summer of 2019, my friends (now colleagues) and I were invited back to Hampton Court Palace to create another video for the garden and landscape design company, Gardens for Good, offered the opportunity to expand on one of our university projects to create a video for the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University and Waitrose had asked me to make a followup video to the Partnership Day video. It was clear to me that I had learned the formula to make effective corporate videos for my clients, and whilst they were happy with the outcome, my thirst for improving my own content was growing and growing. After I had been paid for the work mentioned above, I immediately bought a new lens, saying that I needed a wide-angle lens to take awesome photos while on holiday in India.
Videography is like learning a language, you learn the basics and have the standard equipment (Camera, tripod, lights, microphone, a lens and a computer to edit on) and you're already 80% of the way there. Investing in better tech, software and becoming a better storyteller will help close the gap to the top.
And that is why I needed a change.
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