Lockdown’s been here for nearly a year – and strict Covid19 restrictions are going to be with us for a while. But that has not stopped us filming during Covid – producing top class, high impact videos in new and innovative ways.
Workflow 1
A campaign group wanted to publicise the effects of lockdown on their children. Many of the parents wanted to remain anonymous – and the prevalence of Covid made many people reluctant to have a film crew in their houses.
The solution was simple. We got parents to record themselves and give testimony to the problems their children were facing during the Coronavirus lockdown.
We were then able to enrol two volunteers, one who allowed us to film indoors. If we had struggled for volunteers, we could have engaged actors for a few hundred pounds. As a company we have experience in working with major BBC TV productions during lockdown – so the health and safety aspects of this were second nature to us.
By using high end, 4K camera equipment we were able to capture artistic, anonymous images of the children re-enacting the scenarios we’d heard about in the parents’ recordings.
This not only had the advantage of being Covid friendly – it was incredibly quick and cheap. The resulting made-for-Facebook vertical video got around 100,000 views in the first week. One posting of the video got more than 1,100 likes and 700 retweets!
This was an incredibly efficient way of having an impact – it took just a week from conception to delivery! Filming during lockdown didn’t prove to be an obstacle!
Workflow 2
A charity had committed to a major dance competition for disabled participants. A series of one-to-one dance lessons had been planned – along with a final in a large theatre.
The Coronavirus pandemic made this impossible – so we began work on an alternative plan.
Zoom was the platform of choice – and we recorded everything on the it. The dance lessons, the final performances and the judge’s deliberations.
The hour-long video we produced was a successful and popular Facebook and YouTube stream. It was a picked up by the National ITV news in Wales where parts of the video were reproduced!
The process wasn’t easy – and there were lots of lessons to learn along the way. We particularly struggled with sound on some sections, and the video was always a compromise. But having learned the lessons we found solutions which worked brilliantly for later recordings!
We are now ways to apply our new-found expertise in a world likely to be plagued by Covid for some time yet..
Rough Cut Media Ltd 