In Your Shoes - Peter Jackson

Monday: Motivation and Planning

Monday morning means organisation, setting out the goals for the week. This is usually just a high level list to keep me on track but inevitably, there will be deviations; as long as everything is done I suppose. We do a lot of internal projects to keep our knives sharp, we currently have 2 of these projects on the go; one in the editing stage and the other during its infancy stages, planning out the story of our fake advert. This for me, is the best part of creating content because I get to air all my ridiculous and near impossible ideas just before the point where they get shot down (this is where I wish I had the REAL Peter Jackson’s budgets). I did however, come up with some ideas that are possible and began to pass these ideas onto a storyboard artist we work with to help visualise how our fake ad will look- very exciting!

Tuesday: Hybrid Working

I recently got the home office set up the other week just in time for moving house… a little short lived but I’ve enjoyed WFH over the past couple of weeks. A change of scenery really helps me stay creative however, Tuesday was an inbetween day as I had to prepare my video production kit for a shoot the following day which needed to be done at the studio. 

Kit preparation is so important and something we do before every single shoot; charging batteries, cleaning lenses and meticulously packing everything into bags for it to be thrown back in after the shoot as quickly as we can so that we can all get home in time for tea. Talking about food, we received a sample box from a new supplier that sends traybakes in the mail. We liked them so much that we instantly ordered boxes for all the clients we had recently finished projects for and it’s safe to say it went down a treat (pun intended). Tuesday was one of the few days in the year where the weather was half decent so I decided that instead of moaning about how little sunlight we have in our studio (it’s meant to be dark), I would make the most of the weather and head home in the afternoon, go for a nice walk in the countryside and continue on with my tasks from the newly built and short lived home office. I managed to get the finishing touches done to our showreel featuring our favourite shots from an automation client we have worked with this year and I can’t wait to share this with everyone! 

Wednesday: On-Location Filming

The work day starts with loading my “meticulously” organised camera bags into the car ready for a day of filming for a Funeral Directors in Dundee. FYI, they returned far less organised. 

I can’t tell you much about the shoot itself but what I can tell you is that the staff could not have been more accommodating and professional, making my job really straightforward. I do everything I can to minimise the impact of filming on staff as I totally understand that their company and customers come first but to create effective video and photo content, it often requires the expert knowledge and support of the staff.

After every filming day it is really important that all of the footage is organised and backed up to multiple drives. We recently spent a lot of time (and money) building a new and improved system for backing up our media which has really helped me sleep better. 

Thursday: Home Office and Creative Planning

Thursday saw another day of working from home which was helpful because we are moving to Dundee the following week. We moved our studio at the start of the year but I have been commuting from Brechin which was starting to get old. Moving house is my least favourite thing however, being self employed does allow me to organise my time to make the process a little less painful so I decided that I would pack some boxes in between work tasks. As boring as this sounds, I did spend time working with our storyboard artist to continue developing our ideas. I can’t say too much about the project apart from it will be a mixed media film layering 2D animation on top of video footage which is something we’ve never done before. We expect this project to take a very long time due to the complexity, mixing the two techniques but we can’t wait to share the results.

Friday: Logistics and Coordination

My role at Backlit Films can be super creative but a lot of the video production process is logistics. There are so many moving parts with coordinating rentals and suppliers to make projects possible; Friday was one of those days. We are currently putting together a kitchen set for an upcoming project which required a van to pick up and transport the kitchen. I’ve never been much of a DIY’er but since moving into our much bigger studio, we’ve been able to do a lot more in terms of set builds for video projects and I have been honing my building skills. We also arranged a voiceover recording session for Agricarbon, a new client we are really excited to work with which ended my work week. 

I hope this gave a little insight into what I do at Backlit Films. Unfortunately, not every week we get to shoot epic food and drink videos and a lot of my time is spent coordinating projects but this is what helps us continue to push forward. Just remember, for every cool video you see on social media, there’s hundreds of emails, phone calls and documents created to make it happen.