When I read the quote below posted by Ruth Power I didn’t realise what an impact it would have on one of my clients as well as myself in the following few days.

“Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine”  Bob Carter

Jayne Moorby marketing manager at Oxley Group in Ulverston,  had just received an email giving her three days notice to provide a twenty second video to showcase the company at the Farnborough air show.  Oxley produce a world leading range of aerospace lighting and needed to show their full capability from design, through prototyping, to in-house manufacturing and testing.  The video would be used to promote the Oxley capability and attract foreign visitors to the show.

Realising that the timescale would be a major issue, Jayne consulted with her business network and Lisa Hudson, Marketing Manager at Bender UK, another Ulverston based company recommended that she should call R Gill Photography. 

Its not unusual for me to receive urgent calls from clients who need projects turned round in very short time frames.  I knew that if I gave Jayne the right guidance and if all the preparation work was done as requested then there was every chance of meeting the deadline.

For the project to be successful it would need some careful planning.  I told Jayne what needed to be done:

• Draft an outline script 
• Inform the other departments, products and staff who would be filmed and get them prepared for filming on short notice.
• Be available to review the draft of the video and provide feedback on a quick turnaround 

We arranged to meet the following morning to finalise the script and do the filming.  Jayne had done a great job preparing the team.  All the areas of the factory that were involved had got their equipment set up ready for filming, and I was able to capture the footage in just 2 hours.  

There was only one other thing that might derail the project.  Jayne’s boss was keen to include some footage of one of the Oxley products, an aircraft landing light, being used on an aircraft.  So she needed to source a clip of a Gulfstream 500 aircraft  coming into land.  Jayne tracked down a clip from YouTube from an overseas source.  The only contact details for the copyright holder was via a Twitter account and fortunately he responded to the request for Oxley to use his clip.   The bad news was, he had lost the original footage in an IT crash! 

After a bit of research I worked out a way to download the clip from Youtube in high enough quality format to include in the final video so that it would blend in seamlessly with the rest of the content.  

After a couple of edits and revisions the video was finished and ready  to be sent by the deadline.  

Jayne commented afterwards:

“Absolutely delighted with a video that Richard has made for us. He was very responsive, creative, helpful and realistic and worked within a particularly tight timeframe to deliver. We'll certainly use Richard again and if you're looking for someone to work with on a corporate video I wouldn't hesitate to recommend that you contact Richard.”

Oxley Aerospace LightingA short video showing the capability of the Oxley Group to produce aerospace lighting