Once in a while...

So now... last week we went south to film Adam and Jessica’s wedding at The Great Hall in Mains. What a lovely day - spring is gorgeous for filming - all of those colours seem, well, just so colourful.
http://www.thegreathallatmains.co.uk

Directional Drilling Film

Last summer, we got involved with producing a film about a directional drilling project which was drilling a pipe under the River Wyre between Preesall and Thornton in North Lancashire. The pipe would then take the mains electricity cables through to power Fleetwood. It was a really interesting project - I don;t think I’d ever thought about electricity and how it gets places before. This pipe was a mile long and was drilled 25 metres under the river bed... YES! 25 metres! Amazing! Anyway, the film will hopeful be a useful marketing tool for the drill company because the process is quite difficult to explain - so we went and films the men doing the work and then interviewed the project manager - he told it better than anyone else.

The sky is the limit

This month, we purchased a very shiny piece of kit - it’s a quadcopter - basically a drone with a camera so that we can fly up and film aerial views. It will be perfect for civil engineering projects, but we think that all films need at least one aerial shot! We are out all the time at the moment getting our flying hours in!

Dee + Barry

I guess we can now claim the title of ‘International wedding film makers’! Last November, we threw the dog in the back of the car with cameras, glide tracks and tripods and with the Proclaimers playing at full-blast, we headed across the border to film Dee and Barry’s wedding in the fair city of Edinburgh.

Now Dee and Barry’s wedding film was a present from Shirley and Brian, whose wedding we had filmed in March (are you keeping up?). Shirley loves Gorgeous Media so much she has decided to make it her very own mission to bring us northwards to film things whenever she can. We love Shirley!

Dee and Barry were lovely. Their day was at the Corn Exchange in Edinburgh. We stayed over at Scottish Margaret’s house the night before and got the train into Edinburgh on the Saturday morning. The train was packed and we were laden with equipment. However, people were so helpful and friendly and keen to help us, we were well looked after. A taxi ride later, we arrived at the Corn Exchange - always a relief when you are miles away from home and in foreign parts.

Dee arrived in style in her brother’s bright orange pick up truck. Barry and Dee had met through their jobs at Rentokil. They were lovely to work with. The venue was a bit of a challenge because they had this strange lighting set up which meant that the staff were intent on changing the colour of the room which made getting the colour-balance a bit of a nightmare. We spent a really pleasant day in Edinburgh and got back to Scottish Margaret’s to capture the footage over a dry white wine and Strictly Come Dancing.

Shirley reckons we are “Rather good at this videoing malarky”. We hope to go back up there soon.

Jane Austen Festival, Bath - The Gorgeous Georgians

Last weekend, I travelled down to Bath to film some of the events at the Jane Austen Festival. We had booked an apartment in the Circus at the top of the City, just around the corner from the Royal Crescent - It turned out that the house in which we stayed had once belonged to William Gladstone and was next door to Gainsborough’s house. I was impressed.

The Jane Austen Festival runs annually and is the culmination for many of a Georgian Festival season of promenading through various towns and cities. It was quite a spectacle. On Saturday morning, 700 people dressed as Georgians congregated in the private gardens across from the Royal Crescent. 700 people dressed as Georgians made quite a visual impact. I filmed them as they walked down through the City into the Promenade Gardens near Pulteney Bridge. Filming 700 Georgians in Bath, I felt like I was filming a period drama - and watching people chatting and laughing and surreptitiously looking each other up and down - made me think that the human state doesn’t really change - this is probably just what the Georgians would have been doing! The only difference was that many of these Georgians had mobile phones. To begin with I found myself wondering why on earth people dress up in period costume and promenade about the place… However, after a while I found that I had stopped intellectualising the situation in front of me, and just enjoyed watching 700 people (and 1000s more around them who were non-Georgians) just enjoying themselves.

After the promenade, I walked back up home with three Georgian friends. The locals of Bath must be fairly used to seeing Georgians walking through their town. We walked through Paperchase and the staff hardly flinched. However, our journey home took ages whilst my Georgian friends posed for photographs with tourists from all over the world.

I am pleased with the film I made - it just tells the story of a day in Bath and I think that is what my job of filmmaker is.

Shelley + Dave

Shelley and Dave got married last weekend at Mitton Hall in Whalley. It is not often we go south, probably because we are so near so many amazing venue in the Lake District. First wedding in our new car - our rather swanky Aqua Blue Hyundai i30 (which I am sure looks like a BMW if you squint!). It felt rather good to swing into the car park of the Mitton Hall in a proper vehicle - I loved my purple Rover, but was beginning to feel a bit like a character out of The Young Ones (the 80’s comedy not Cliff Richard film). Note the way I always reference my cars by their colour? If I were a boy, I would know the engine size and who produced the subframe… totally irrelevant when you are a girl. Shelley and Dave love rallying, so I feel justified discussing cars in this post.

Saturday was a day of Daves - Dave married Shelley, Uncle Dave gave Shelley away and Dave was the legendary emcee at the Mitton. It was another gorgeous day for sure. Shelley and Dave weren’t going to have a wedding film, but this was a wedding gift to them from a couple of friends who were unable to attend. I think that wedding films for many people are something that they wish they had had, but that only dawns on them after the event. So, Shelley and Dave are in a win/win situation. I know I may be biased, but I think that a making a wedding present of a wedding film is a lovely idea you are giving someone the memory of the day forever and ever - when you think about it like that, it’s just a massive thing.

Holly + Sam

Holly and Sam got married a few weeks ago at The Merewood in Windermere. It was the first weekend of our good weather spell. I had had started to have anxiety nightmares a few weeks before the wedding because there had been word of an informal fly past (Sam’s in the RAF). For a videographer, this would have been a challenge; I mean I know that you have to be alert to film a wedding - there are crucial moments - for example, you can’t miss the exchange of rings, the vital kiss, the meeting down the aisle… However, a fly past is totally out of our experience. Imagine, cameras poised skywards… only to miss… I was sort of resigned to just filming people’s reactions and sort of hedging my bets a bit, blue screen and CGI effects did come to my mind. When we arrived on the morning to film Holly getting ready, what a relief when she said it was not happening anymore. I think that Lydia, the marvellous photographer lady who splits her life between Bolton and the South of France, was equally relieved!

Despite the lack of a fly past, the day was beautiful - Holly’s friend sang her into the ceremony to Eva Cassidy’s Song Bird, another friend read a self-penned poem and Holly’s sister’s boyfriend piped the happy couple from one part of the day to the next.