Many clients visiting our website and YouTube channel find it useful to watch clips featuring a venue they are planning to hire for their event. Over the years we’ve filmed at hundreds of venues around the country so now have an enormous resource which we can offer people access to. Consequently, we have just launched a weddings & event venues section on website which lists all these in an easy to use way. Over the coming weeks we shall be adding more and more videos. We are excited that this will provide a fabulous opportunity for people planning their weddings & events to visualise how they might look in these locations.
For 2010 Bloomsbury Films has already been booked for dozens of new and interesting venues both in the UK and overseas. We therefore hope that we shall be able to continue adding to this resource in the future and look forward to helping our clients plan the perfect day. To visit our new wedding & event venues page click here.
Every year we produce a small number of wedding films known as the ‘Director’s Cut Package‘. These are higher budget productions filmed with three videographers, plus myself attending in person on the day to direct. I like to make each of my Director’s Cut films different, both to satisfy the specific needs of our clients, but also to provide ourselves with a new and interesting challenge. In April this year we filmed the first of these special films for Yasamin & Bilal who held their wedding on the top floor of the London landmark The Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe).
It was clear to me that the couple, who hail from Lebanese and Iraqi parentage, really wanted to make the most of London in their wedding film. With family back in the Middle East, it was no doubt a source of great pride to be able to show off the city and their impressive wedding plans. Luckily for them, their wedding was on a splendidly bright and sunny day which enabled our crew to present the city in the best possible light.
After conducting my production research, I divided our team into two units. One videographer (Paul) was charged with the task of capturing lots of different external perspectives of The Gherkin as well as key London landmarks. This meant spending nearly half the day running around London, jumping out the car and filming! The other two (Eva & Rich) focussed more on the event, with Eva filming the bride preps and the sequence en route to the Gherkin with the aid of a support vehicle. Rich had a steadicam rig for part of the day as I wanted to make the most of the spiral staircase that led up to the top floor. I particularly wanted to capture the sunlight breaking through as the bride ascended the stairs to the ceremony. This rig, and the use of fisheye lenses, made it more possible to capture the feel of the location in a more visually exciting way.
As a film-maker, another big thing of mine is sunset shots - a passion shared by our clients. It was therefore a point of focus for us to make sure we did our best to make the most of the once-in-a-lifetime experience of being on the top floor of the Gherkin by capturing this. After the shoot, we had about 12 hours of footage to work with and from this produced a 90 minute film. It incorporates a lot of Arabic music, not all to my taste, but certainly it gave it an interesting cross-cultural feel!
To round off the production we bought some aerial stock footage of the Gherkin from Getty Images (I could spend all day on their site!). This afforded me the opportunity to give the film an extra ‘wow factor’ and I am pleased to say that the final result is very satisfying. You can see highlights of this film below:
A few months ago we decided to launch our own Facebook Page as a way of interacting with past, present and future clients. We now upload highlights of different jobs to the page as they are completed, so visitors can see our range of work and make comments in an easy, friendly environment. I am pleased to say it is very popular, with clients taking a keen interest in the videos and newcomers watching these as a source of inspiration. Indeed our videos seem to not only serve as an example of good videography, but provide an excellent source of ideas for planning their wedding or event!
We heartily welcome comments from prospective clients, whether they are wondering about how to achieve the best videography, which photographers we recommend or what venues to book. As film-makers we know a lot about making things look good, so our advice is sought after on many subjects. Meanwhile the ‘Discussions‘ section of our Facebook page has a number of topics that are being widely shared. We’ve also included some general tips and advice which we hope our clients enjoy.
If you haven’t already subscribed to our Facebook page or know a friend who might like to check it out, please don’t hesitate to look it up at The Bloomsbury Films’ Facebook Page
Summer 2009 has been a record season for us with a mountain of weddings! Our videographers worked flat out filming up to 9 weddings each weekend. As you can imagine, it was a logistically and physically demanding task to cover so many in such a short space of time - especially with some as far afield as Italy! However, I am pleased to say we managed to navigate through them without a single hitch. I am proud of our production team, which comprises really talented camera crew and editors that I have handpicked over the years. Indeed its a testimony to them that Iris and I managed to take our belated honeymoon to California earlier this month leaving the team to cope with yet another 6 weddings in our absence!
However despite all the exertions of the last few months, here comes the rub… filming on the day is only a small part of the process of making a professional video! What really consumes the man hours - is post-production. I recall in 2007 how we were overwhelmed with editing - taking about 6 months to clear it all! Well, the truth is we have nearly twice as much editing now! Okay we’ve moved on a bit since then, we’ve now got our own fully equipped studio capable of working flat out as well as being much more efficient. But it still its quite bewildering to find yourself faced with about 60 films that all need editing at once! To put this into perspective, during our recent US trip, we took a VIP tour of Warner Bros Studios. Our guide boasted that this huge complex was capable of handling 8-20 productions at any one time. It comforted me to reflect that this means our much more humble studio in East London must be on a par with Warner Bros!
Anyway, we’ve got off to a good start with the post-production, however I do expect to be hibernating in the studio for a while with my work cut out until the Spring!
When we launched Bloomsbury Films ® in 2006, the business was designed to compliment our film & TV operation Marchmont Films. As a successful independent film production company, we are keen to expand and develop our business. This Autumn we shall be launching Towergate Studios, which will be a one-stop-shop for corporate media and video production. Taking advantage of our recently acquired studio space in East London, we are well poised to develop our business further. In the last few years Bloomsbury Films has earned a great reputation in the event filming and videography sector and so we are hopeful that the launch of Towergate Studios will prove equally successful, adding another pillar to our growing independent production company. If you have any enquiries for corporate video production, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Over the coming months we shall be launching a sister company called Towergate Media. For some time the team and I at Bloomsbury Films have been wanting to widen our net beyond event filming and documentaries. Our experience in high quality video production has already led us to produce promotional videos, web television, training videos and much more.
We now feel ready to bring these skills to the market and have decided to do so under a separate entity. The name ‘Towergate Media’ comes from the area we are based - near The Tower of London and Tower Gateway station. We previously named Bloomsbury Films after the area we were based at the time and our parent company Marchmont Films gets its name from the street where I started my film-making career.
Because the new area of work is distinctly different from our current area, we wanted a separate brand ID that would reflect its more corporate nature. Towergate Media seems to work for us and its name also recognises the fact that much of the video production work in this sector is integrated into other media platforms such as the web.
We will have more to say on the subject over the coming months, but we hope you will agree with us that this is an exciting new development which we hope will strengthen our resources and market position.
The wedding season is well and truly upon us once again! Despite some initial uncertainty about how the credit crunch would affect wedding & event filming, we are set for another bumper year with bookings on the rise. Perhaps a notable trend however amongst clients has been a tendency to increasingly leave bookings to the last minute. Of course you might expect this amongst businesses who are driven by a reactive market-orientated agenda. [We keep a tally of the most extreme 'last minute' bookings - the current record holder is Citibank who wanted an event filmed in central London in 45 minutes time. And yes, we made it!]
However it is also increasingly common to receive bookings for weddings only a week, and in some cases, only a day beforehand! Why on earth would someone leave it so late you might ask? Have we reached the inevitable outcome for our lastminute.com lifestyles? Well no, not entirely. The answer lies in an inherent issue in the wedding filming market - that the value of a wedding video is only appreciated after the event. Before their nuptials couples are busy focussing on plans for the big day and often don’t think so much about what happens afterwards (apart from being married of course!). Wedding videos are frequently overshadowed by photography, which as an established convention, tends to be booked earlier - to the detriment of their videography budget.
A combination of oversight and financial constraints means that wedding videos get put off to the last minute. Panic sets in just a week or two before the wedding as the couple suddenly realise how much they’d like it captured and the value of what is essential a family documentary will have in the future. The result can be a reluctant parent digging even deeper into their pockets and a last minute scrabble to find someone available.
However like the websites that specialise in finding you ‘last minute bargains’, leaving it to the last minute doesn’t necessary provide the best choice or opportunity to get what you really want. Unfortunately we can’t change this pitfall, but at Bloomsbury Films we do our best to help by ensuring that every client who books with us, last minute or otherwise, never regrets their choice.
At the start of this month Bloomsbury Films was neatly packed up into boxes and moved across town to a new studio location in London’s trendy East End. Taking advantage of the hard hit property market on the periphery of London’s financial district, we were lucky to find a 1500 sqft unit in a converted warehouse that would suit our needs now and in the foreseeable future.
New Bloomsbury Films Office
A stone’s throw from Brick Lane, it is conveniently close to Aldgate & Aldgate East tube stations as well as Tower Gateway DLR. From these new offices we continue to operate our sales & administration, video kit storage and maintenance, production planning where our director’s overseeing all our projects. Over the coming months we shall also be introducing additional in-house studio facilities that will enable us to extend our range of services.
We’re very excited about the move, especially as we continue to expand the range of services provided by Bloomsbury Films. Although wedding videos are still currently our biggest market, we are beginning to attract more types of live event filming including interest from businesses for conference filming. We hope you will be able to pay us a visit sometime!
The same glorious day in August when Dan & Eva were filming Jehan & Guillaume’s wedding at Claridges, our videographer Matt filmed Sunny & Bing’s wedding in Surrey. A ‘Classic‘ single-camera production, it covered Sunny getting reading before guests arriving at Ramster House for the wedding. I must say Ramster House wasn’t a venue we’d ever filmed at before, but the lovely grounds and the imposing Long Hall provide a stunning backdrop for a wedding.
Bing is a cartoonist and unlike many grooms(!), contributed his talents to the wedding planning by designing the table plan and laying out Scrabble pieces for place cards. This enables a competition for the highest scoring name during the banquet! As you can see from the video, it was a relaxed and enjoyable wedding with a location that enabled guests to enjoy the weather. The music track for the highlights is by Duran Duran, Sunny and Bing were quite original in their suggestions and I think it fitted the edit rather well.
A R Rahman for Asian weddings! Probably one of the hardest and relentless professionals working in the film industry today: A R Rahman is now getting recognition for his work here in the west!
After watching the BAFTAS I began reflecting on how relevant and widespread his work is, particularly in the field of Asian Wedding videos.
We always ask our clients to supply some choices for the music they want for their wedding video and they tend to choose popular, romantic songs from recent Bollywood films. These very frequently are songs composed by the man himself and we have found his work to be brilliant for enhancing the emotion in our films making them engaging even to viewers who did not attend the wedding!
It really adds that “Bollywood Love Story” element to the work we make here at Bloomsbury Films. Another huge plus is the sheer range of the music he puts out, music that goes well with dancing, the actual marriage ceremony, people socializing and the wide variety of special performances young people put on for Asian Weddings.
The other great thing is that many of the most popular movies have weddings in the story and so in turn the songs contain well suited lyrics that are relevant to work. Recently the most popular requests have been songs from the soundtracks of: Guru, Jodhaa Akbar, Rang De Basanti & of course Slumdog Millionaire… all composed by A R Rahman.
This allows us to give every Asian couple the Bollywood movie experience for their wedding video!
