Insights

Where the camera is placed decides how the viewer feels about what they see, long before they process the words. This is the quietest and most powerful decision in any film. Documentary: the neutrality of eye level At eye level the viewer sees the subject as an equal. Nothing is being dramatised, nothing exaggerated —…

A negative comment under a company video feels like a problem. In most cases it is the opposite: it means the video reached beyond the circle of people who already agree with you. How one video became a success story One of our client’s films collected an unusual number of arguments in the comments —…

At a corporate event the camera is simply part of the room. A few practical things make the difference between footage you are happy to see and footage you would rather not. 1. Pay attention to the light Stand so that light falls on your face rather than behind you. Directly under a ceiling spotlight…

There is one question that separates a professional from an amateur faster than any portfolio: what lighting do you use? If the answer is that room light or daylight will do, you have your answer. Why lighting matters more than the camera However good the camera is, without the right light it will not record…

Make-up on a shoot has nothing to do with vanity and nothing to do with gender. It is a working tool, used for the same reason a microphone is used: the camera does not see what the eye sees. What the camera sees and the eye does not In person someone looks normal. On camera…

Drone footage is the easiest thing to sell to a client and the easiest thing to overuse. The question is never whether aerial shots look impressive — they do — but whether they tell the viewer something the story needs. How aerial footage supports a story A drone is good at one thing above all:…

Equipment lists in quotes impress nobody who has worked with video before. What matters is not what the camera costs but how well the person holding it knows it — and whether there is a second one in the car if the first fails. Why expensive equipment does not guarantee a better result A camera…

The most common reason a well-made corporate film fails is not the picture. It is that the person on camera speaks the language of their own profession. What sounds normal to colleagues often sounds like a foreign language to the viewer — and a viewer who does not understand does not ask, they leave. Why…

We have renewed our membership of a business networking organisation for the third year. This is not a recommendation — it is an account of what it actually returned, and who it does not suit. 1. The investment returned fifteen times over Measured in signed work against the cost of membership and the mornings spent,…

Film crews use a handful of techniques that cost nothing and change everything. None of them requires an expensive camera, and all three work in an ordinary office. Technique 1: film from the shadow side of the face Place the key light so that it falls across the face and film from the darker side….

One quote says a camera operator and an edit. Another says a crew, lighting, separately recorded sound and colour grading. The figures differ by a factor of two, and the client is left comparing numbers that describe different products. The honest answer is that both can be right — for different jobs. Can one person…

Two recordings of the same scene can look entirely different, and the usual explanation — a better camera — is wrong. The thing that most often separates something that feels like cinema from something that feels like a live broadcast is frame rate. What 24, 30 and 60 fps mean Frames per second is how…