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.
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!
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!
We can usually reckon on August bank holiday being one of the business periods in our diary. In 2008 this was definitely the case, with four weddings on just the Saturday alone! One of these was Jehan & Guillaume’s which was held in the elegant and prestigious surroundings of Claridges Hotel in London. Filmed by our videographers Dan & Eva, I am glad at how well we managed to capture the glamour and sophistication of the hotel despite the pressures of having to be discreet at such a venue.
Also lucky for Jehan & Guillaume was the fact their wedding day was organised by society wedding planners Niemierko[formerly Smith Niemierko] who provided their usual creative flair and expertise. Their function was attended by several dignitaries, so I imagine it was with some relief their wedding day ran perfectly and the guests were wowed with plenty of nice touches and a magnificent banquet. During dinner a very proud father gave an eloquent speech in praise of the bride and the pair enjoyed a great deal of warmth and attention from many others. One particular highlight of the event was the live musical entertainment provided by two different bands, who both seemed to capture the mood of the guests very well.
Without being stuffy, it was a very elegant wedding which I feel is reflected in the highlights of the video below. I am also glad to say this was confirmed by Jehan herself who called us this week to order some extra DVDs!
Last July our videographers Dishad and David set off to Berkshire to film Natalie and Andrew’s wedding. It was the kind of sunny day that all couples who book summer weddings hope for. Their ceremony took place in a beautiful school church which I imagine had personal connections. The reception afterwards was held in a marquee in the grounds of Natalie’s parent’s house. I think it is very special to have a wedding reception at one home, not least of all because the wedding videography and photography then creates a portrait of somewhere you know and care about!
In making this film we covered the grooms preparations as well as the brides. This is fairly unusual as bride preparations tend to look more visually impressive, although I think it is very nice to provide a behind-the-scenes portrait for both of them. As you can see in the trailer we used black & white for highlight parts of the church service. This is because we had extraordinarily beautiful light flooding though the arch windows, which gave it a photographic quality that I was very keen to represent. I think the video came out very well for Natalie and Andrew and I hope they enjoy looking back on it for years to come.
In the meantime, we filmed the wedding of Natalie’s sister Jessica a few weeks ago in early January. Having seen what a wonderfully frosty backdrop the landscape provided in the raw footage, I anticipate this having an equally strong visual quality to it.
Ever since creating our first wedding films, I have wanted to bring elements of my interests in feature film production to the table. One of these elements is trailers - I love watching them at the cinema as they don’t just advertise, but build the sense of expectation and excitement around a film release. Similarly after months of work in the production and editing of a client’s wedding film, we create a short wedding video trailer for them.
These are extremely popular and get watched hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of times. The trailers are presented in a unique website created for our client. Some examples include:
Our trailers are uploaded about 7-10 days before the wedding DVD is delivered. To give you an idea of their popularity, the least any of these has been watched is 50 times and the most is over 1000 times! I consider this to be a very significant because the full length wedding video is unlikely to achieve such audience figures ever!
Many of our older trailers have attracted even bigger viewing figures as clients pass on their site to family, friends and work colleagues. For example we have a Sikh wedding video that has attracted 5000 hits over the last 6 months and we have one Bengali wedding video reaching over 20000! Surely that must make these box office hits within the wedding video world? Of course, not all our wedding videos appear on our You Tube channel (a few clients anxiously avoid it) but those that do are very glad of the opportunity to share a small part of their video with so many others. At around 3 minutes in length it is digestible enough for everyone and saves either lending DVDs or imposing on less enthusiastic family and friends.
