By Danny Piercy
We were recently asked to go along to the Clothes Show Live 2011, held at the NEC in Birmingham, to film a set of videos for our client, Beautiful Brows. Our client was there exhibiting their unique make-up product line and required on-location promotional and demonstrational videos.
We had to be at Birmingham before 9AM in order to miss the mohassive crowd whilst filming, this involved getting up at silly O’clock to make sure we were all packed up and on the road on time. The sacrifices we make… oh, and it was a Saturday, A SATURDAY!
The sheer scale of the venue was awesome; there were 100’s of stands from top brands such as Benefit, Superdy, Rimmel and Paul’s Boutique. Once we’d managed to find the Beautiful Brows stand we started to set up our equipment to begin filming.
The first video we were going to shoot was an instructional video to demonstrate how to use the eyebrow make-up. We set up our lighting, audio equipment and microphones and cameras ready to start filming the demonstrator and model. A crowd started to gather as we clearly looked like we were about to film the next Star Wars!
Even with the pressure of the crowd and a few technical problems, we were able to get all the footage we needed and more. We had two cameras filming this as we needed a steady tripod mounted wide shot of the demonstrator and model and also, close up shots of the make-up being applied.
The second video was the promotional video. The brief for this was to show off the stand that Beautiful Brows had set up; and obviously include a few clips of all the other companies that were at the show alongside them. So we were left to our own devices and went around filming people using the products and trying the make-up on, trying to capture the excitement and hustle and bustle of the whole event.
It was a little awkward at times trying to set the tripod up to get certain shots, due to how busy the event was,, particularly the fashion catwalk shots – around the stage was jammed. It was also a little tricky to get a shot because of the people in front of me too – luckily I had a go-go-gadget-super-extended, well… a tripod. We must have made the models feel a little uneasy, seeing a camera floating above the crowd’s heads 7ft in the air!
Between ignoring texts from my girlfriend demanding I grab as many free samples as I could and trying not to KO people with the tripod, I had to make sure we got the right shots for the promotional video; we had to get across to the viewers, the scale of the place and just how busy it was. In addition to this we captured close-ups of people using the products and their reaction when they first discover that they can have perfect eyebrows quicker than you can say ‘Ireallyshouldn’thavedrankthatredbullat6AM’.
Once we had more than enough footage it was time to jump into the car and get back on the road to head home. As it was the weekend we got back to Liverpool quite quickly, and then spent the rest of the day keeping ourselves busy doing nothing, the video editing can wait till Monday!
Tags: 2011, Beautiful Brows, Clothes Show Live, Fashion, filming
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