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.