 Never work with children or animals they say. Sound advice as we prepared to shoot six videos in three days for a professional services client at their facility in Westlake, an upmarket suburb of Dallas, Texas. OK, our shoot didn't have any children, but we did have two animals. Sure, one was a child's toy, but you never know. Luckily for us, the other, a dachshund schnauzer cross called Rigsby, was incredibly well behaved. As were our crew, who were amazing. The challenge with any shoot is coping with the unexpected and making sure you get exactly the footage you need - you literally get one shot. This can be especially tricky when you're shooting outdoors. On any shoot, the weather can be a demanding diva, prone to sulking and spoiling your day. For us, she managed to maintain a beautiful disposition, ensuring day long sunshine - we did all get sunburnt though, just to remind us who's boss. Apart from Dallas air traffic control insisting on routing every plane within a 50 mile radius over our location every few minutes, we managed to contain the external factors to a minimum. The days were long, but very productive and well marshalled by the team at Casual Films, our partner on the shoot. Extremely professional and very client friendly, they coped with the intricacies of shooting in a sometimes sensitive environment. We've seen the first edit and it looks amazing, and we're confident the rest of the videos will be just as good. Film shoots can be either a lot of fun or very hard work - our shoot in Texas managed to be a combination of both. Gary Singh, Project Manager
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 Late last week I started to see a number of tweets and posts from “prominent” sports journalists lamenting another round of layoffs at a major sports entertainment company. These layoffs affected everyone from longstanding on-air talent, to new, emerging data whizzes, and the support staff behind the scenes who make everything possible. In total, something like 100+ people were let go. A big chunk in an ever-shrinking industry. The company doing the layoffs hasn’t always had the best reputation as an employer and certainly was catching backlash for this most recent cost-cutting manoeuvre. And that’s worth mentioning because what I saw in the posts from the actual ex-employees was rather impressive. Sure a few folks took the opportunity to stick it to their old employer, but the majority were actually very sincere about the time they spent there, the work they did, and most frequently the people they worked with.  Many of these people are obviously media trained and would never publish something that could jeopardise their career, but the amount of honest love for their colleagues whom they wouldn’t share an “office” with anymore was really astounding. For all the faults of their former company, the people who were and are still employees built something important there. What they built was a community of coworkers who grew into a family. It’s because of that familial feeling that I wasn’t reading a bunch of nasty gossip or negativity about the company. I was reading and hearing genuine positivity that even in light of layoffs put the company in question in a fairly good light.  The reality of business is there are times where costs are going to be cut or hard calls have to be made. If we can cultivate a culture of togetherness and camaraderie those tough decisions won’t be any easier to make, but those individuals who do move on will hopefully do so with positive memories and impressions of their time.
Tim Middleton, Agency Director |
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