My 3 Toughest Video Shoots

Over the years, I have been incredibly fortunate to work on some fantastic projects. But, that doesn’t mean they’ve always been straightforward or stress-free! Here are some of the toughest shoots I have encountered to date:

Brentwood County High School

First thing to say is, this was an amazing project despite how hard it was! Brentwood County High School wanted to create a fully immersive experience as close to a real-life school open day as possible. This meant creating something over an hour in length featuring everything from speeches with students to footage of each subject with varying year groups.

The initial filming posed a challenge as the crew was very small, being essentially just myself for the majority. We would go from filming B-Roll in classrooms, to then covering interviews with complex audio setups with very little time to prepare. 

Editing the film was then a completely unique challenge as we had to deliver the project within a matter of days following the wrap. This meant filtering through over a week’s worth of footage and compiling it into a video that would accurately reflect the brief we had been given.

Despite some minor amends, I’m pleased to say this campaign was signed off very swiftly!

Saint Francis Hospice

I have worked on a lot of different shoots with Saint Francis Hospice over the past 18-months, capturing a wide range of content including interviews with nurses, fundraising campaigns and short-films highlighting their events.

The shoots have never been stressful in the slightest, although this one was particularly difficult for an entirely different reason. Back in 2019 I filmed with a patient who was being cared for by the hospice as they were approaching the end of their life. I was really motivated to create this video as I understood the patient in question wanted to highlight the good work the hospice does and as end-of-life care isn’t the most heavily marketed of services, I felt it was a great project to embark on. 

That said, I was going into the home of someone who was severely ill and had to be very careful and considerate with everything I did and said. I haven’t conducted a shoot quite like this before, so it was an incredibly eye-opening encounter and one that I can’t imagine a lot of people working in video will ever experience.

Fabian Delph Interview

In terms of stress, this one is definitely up there! In March 2017 when I was still just 20 years old, I travelled up to Manchester to film with Manchester City and England player Fabian Delph for a documentary I was creating at the time.

As you do with footballers, or any celebrity for that matter, I had a very limited amount of time with Fabian – I think around 15/20 minutes in total. In this time, I had to film the subject of the documentary speaking with Fabian, as well as doing an interview with him myself. This was also the morning of a Manchester City match and despite not being in the matchday squad, Fabian light-heartedly told me that all players (whether in the squad or not) were fined something like £10,000 if they were late to the dressing room pre-game. No pressure there then!

My filmmaking skills certainly had more to be desired at the time, but this was a huge deal for me. I had next to no experience working with celebrities, so this was my first real big gig. So, imagine the pressure of that on my shoulders as well as knowing I have to get everything completed in 20 minutes – operate 2 cameras, monitor 2 audio tracks and ask questions of my own to Fabian.

Safe to say I was pretty relieved when it was over and all had gone to plan!

Encountering tough and stressful situations is just par for the course when it comes to video production, but learning how to deal with those encounters is an incredibly important skill. You have to be prepared to be agile, to read the room and also remain calm under pressure - I guarantee if you can do all of those things then you will be seen as someone very easy to work with which will undoubtedly result in more clients.