Sally Green 0:04
Well hello everyone welcome back once again to Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam, and today we are very much looking forward to having a wide-ranging, meandering conversation as we always do, with David Camburn who is the creative director at Swanwood productions who produce a huge amount... well, you'll find out so actually, I'm not gonna say you'll find out a huge amount about what they do and David's background today in our conversation all about video production and probably many other related issues. So without further ado, I'm just going to ask David to briefly introduce himself and also ask our most important question, which is, what is your favourite dish David?

David Camburn 0:46
Thank you very much. Thank you to Sally, and you for inviting me today. It's great to be with you. Yeah, as you said, I'm the Creative Director of Swanwood Productions. Let's kick off with the food. Well, my favourite food is Mediterranean food. I was kind of converted 20 odd years ago when I got married because my wife is Cypriot and so I discovered all these fantastic new dishes. So I'm an absolute nut on Mediterranean food.

Sally Green 1:13
Lovely... well, you must be very healthy! Because they're very good for you must be you and you're going to live forever, David.

David Camburn 1:21
Olive oil, olive oil is very good for you. That's true.

Sam Birkett 1:23
That's it! Olive oil. That's the one. No, I think I always say this, but it must show that I just eat too many dishes, but I will seem to agree with the person who says the latest dish and it's my favourite as well. Now I'm right there with you on the Mediterranean food, Greek food, and Italian food, my absolute favourites. But yes, I can always get hungry as well, because we record these approaching lunchtime. So I'll be quiet now and I'll hand over to Sally to actually give her our first proper question to explore today.

Sally Green 1:52
Okay, right, we're going to talk about film and I have lots of clients that are really frightened of film. If you say to them, "oh, it'd be really good. If you had a video on your site". They'll all say, "Oh, really? Do I have to?" and so David, do you think that people are getting less frightened of film or we're just doing it better? Or there are different ways of doing it? And why do you think we're so scared anyway?

David Camburn 2:16
I think first of all, it's a personality thing. You're either comfortable in front of a camera or you're not. That's not a problem, you can overcome that. It's a psychological thing. A lot of people think, "oh, an inanimate object is recording me". They feel they don't have confidence, which is nonsense because everybody has confidence, and as soon as you tap into their stories, storytelling is essential, as soon as you warm people up and say, "Forget whatever you want, about professional presentation, and be your authentic self, and tell your stories". And so that's very, very important. And secondary, I think which is key is that social media has exploded what we do. So if you go onto LinkedIn now, as I was earlier this morning, you will scroll through half a dozen people who have recorded themselves on their phone, and they've posted something up. Now, quality, there's huge arguments, some people say it must be really great quality, other people say don't worry, just get it out there. But they are the key. It's confidence, storytelling, authenticity and we have the technology now to spread the word.

Sally Green 3:24
Yeah, that's absolutely right and I think the other thing is there's no problem of doing it not brilliantly the first time, just have a go because people are largely on your side, because they also know it's not a problem. And if you do all the really awful things, like stand in front of a window and film into the window, so you're just this marvellous collage effect, then it doesn't matter, if that's what happens. That's what happens. Don't worry, just keep having a go.

David Camburn 3:55
Absolutely, keep having a go and just tell your story. I bang on about this endlessly and I drive people mad in meetings, but it's part of our raison d'etre. We all have things to say and sure, you're not going to get it right the first time. Look, I'm not a car mechanic. I couldn't go out and fix your car. So I'm not gonna get it right the first time, but I could learn. I still wouldn't be as good as someone who's been trained for 20 years. But at least learn and do it and keep doing it because the more you do it, the better you'll get. And if you want comments, most people are helpful, particularly on things like LinkedIn and there was "I tell you what, why didn't you do that? Why do you do that? Why didn't you mention that?" Bang! and off you go, there's your story. You're growing already.

Sally Green 4:38
Yeah, exactly. Not only have you done one but people have given you ideas for the next one. So yeah, that's really interesting. You know, yes, I once had a 2CV and you know, once upon a time I could change a spark plug, you know, made me feel very special.

Sam Birkett 4:52
Fantastic. I'm gonna do this thing again, where I go off into all these different streams of questions, but I thought I'd try and restrict it. So, as you said, David about sort of, and Sally was saying about the confidence to do video and I suppose you can find it... I've expensive myself, I've done lots of interviews where people have been filmed and, you know, they can come across as being very confident, very good at speaking in front of an audience live, and then suddenly they freeze up because there's lights, camera, action in front of them. So part of the, I suppose from a marketing perspective, it has been the videographer's perspective is getting people at their ease, isn't it as well, so that they can tell the story and be genuine, as you say, because I think that's half the time that there's this expectation isn't there of I have to say the perfect thing very succinctly, very completely in one take and actually part of it is is calming people down and allowing them to, you know, just, as you say, well say what they need to say, really, at that particular juncture. So I suppose how important is it to put people at ease and help them understand the scope of what they're trying to convey in a video.

David Camburn 5:59
That's really interesting Sam, that's a central part of our job. So people think you turn up with cameras, and you set up the lighting, and off you go, bash. The technology is fantastic. But it is all about putting people at ease and there are many courses you can do in terms of confidence and things. But the best training I've always found is just to get people there. So if you have, say, a two-hour block, where you going to film an interview with someone spend the first half an hour just talking to just getting them used to being in an interview situation, explain everything you're going to do. Because very often, I've seen it happen before. When I worked in the news many years ago, they would just go in and right, bang, set up the cameras, let's film. No, explain what you're going to do. You've done your pre-production, so the people that you're interviewing already know what questions you're going to ask, they've been able to prepare. This is not most of the work we do is business to business. This is not a panorama, hard-hitting investigative thing. This is about you explaining your company, and you're not going to do that if you're not at ease. So yeah, confidence, public speaking, some people link it to public speaking. Yes, that's quite important. But it's again, I go back again and again, it's the authenticity. That's what's really important.

Sally Green 7:20
That is really interesting, and actually asking questions, because when I did the video for my website, which I've now taken down because it was rubbish, I did it in every way wrong. I stood in front of a camera with a microphone and just spoke, and actually what you've got in the back of your mind is not oh, I want to tell people my story. I think, oh my god, I'm gonna forget what I wanted to say, Oh, good grief, my hair is looking a disaster and everything is a distraction. It's just amazing how much it comes over as really rubbish when you're feeling like that.

David Camburn 7:55
Absolutely. And, again, to get back to authenticity. It used to be a thing in the past where you would script a lot they'd have they come in, and they've scripted and they want it they want to write this and but it only autocue, sometimes that works. Yeah, if it's a presentation, but again, really, quite a lot of the stuff we do is get rid of the script, forget that we know the areas we're going to talk about. Let's have a discussion, we do a thing, what we call fireside chats, where we basically just chat, we're in like sofa chairs, and we chat and we three or four cameras on that. And it's great. That draws out the stories. Because very often, we will go to a client and say, Oh, we can film this and we filmed that said, No, let's do the interview. First, let's have the fireside chat because very often, although you've done the pre-production, you've talked through everything we're going to talk about, during that discussion, something really interesting will come out about the person or the company. And then you go well, we've got to go and film that we've got to get some shots of that because that's an incredible story. They'll say, Oh, this, you know, this, I've got so and so in my company, they won an Olympic gold medal, say for instance, yeah, we never told us that we'll just go and talk to them, it's an incredible selling point, you know, and that all comes out in the story, it's really important.

Sally Green 9:10
And it's really important to remember that you're going to be cutting all this up. It's not as if if you don't say it fluidly straight off the first time, it's going to be a waste of money because you're going to cut it all up anyway, aren't you?

David Camburn 9:20
Absolutely. I mean, there's always time to stop and do it again and if the interviewee is not happy, you go "Right. We're not going to use that bit. Let's go back. Let's do that. Let's rephrase the question so you can rephrase your answer". We had a client recently who got quite emotional. He was talking about his company and why he set his company up and the reason being that his brother-in-law, his brother-in-law, died in the 911 attacks. He'd been in one of the towers and the result of that was he set up his company. It was a financial company, in memory of his brother-in-law. He got quite emotional, but it was brilliant because we kind of rained it back in with him, and then he explained it again. But it was just a beautiful film because it was so authentic and you couldn't help but be grabbed by that. But we said to him do you want to retake that? And he was like, no, really happy with that, because I explained and got across, you know. But yeah, absolutely. Sorry, to go back to the original point, yep. Always retake, always edit and again, say to the client, listen, in the editing process, we will involve you, we're not gonna go away and cut you out and give you a horrible bit that you don't like. It's like, which bits? Then review at the end of the interview, which bits would you like to use?

Sally Green 10:38
Yeah.

Sam Birkett 10:39
Yeah, I was gonna say that. I mean, the editing process is a whole other dimension as well, isn't it to this, which people sort of, you know, because the thing I always say to someone's saying, "Don't worry, we can take it again, the editing is there". I remember when I first, well way back when I first started getting into doing interviews with people and working with the media team on cutting things up and they had obviously the editing software in front of me, these two or three screens, this amazing studio. I was like, wow, gosh, this is exciting. Lots of flashy lights and buttons and noises. But then the most interesting thing was when they cut it up, as I said, when I asked this person, you know, can they explain to us how this project went in the three stages? And they went "yeah, okay, here we go". And the editors sort of went, right? We don't need that. Don't need that. Cut that, cut that, cut that, went here you go and I went, Okay. Played this back. And I wouldn't say completely transformed everything that was said, but it did transform the overall message to make it succinct, snappy, and it communicated effectively when the person had given a perfectly good answer. But it was then that the editing process just did this sort of almost alchemy, it seems, and it sort of turned it into this extraordinary piece. I thought, wow, yes, that absolutely gets it across. There was other things that weren't necessary in there. But I was just gonna return back just as you said, I just made this connection between we did a recording about brands with Andrew Hancock, and we were talking about the importance of the relationship that's built, obviously, between yourself and your customers and your audience in general and the feeling of the sort of the purpose, of course, getting the purpose across, and I think it is those moments, isn't it? You say that example, you gave that gentleman who had the purpose came out on film, so I suppose capturing that as the ultimate thing to try and achieve. But it made me think of interviews I've done where perhaps it's been on a subject, which is more academic, and, you know, not dry, necessarily, but sort of, it's a quite sensible set of things. It's not terribly emotive on the surface, but quite often, I'll throw in some extra questions afterwards, or just chat in inverted commas, with the cameras rolling with people after I've done the questions they've prepared. And I quite often find at least one of the answers they give there is the one I go, oh, yeah, I think that's the one which actually brought out the story and got to the why they do this in the first place. So I mean, perhaps it's a bit cheeky but I usually it, obviously, I say to people, this is what we're using afterwards and they can approve it, of course, but I just think, is that you know, where we get the more of a human connection, which is going to come across more effectively on film you would you say?

David Camburn 13:04
One of the things I learned for the BBC was almost a summary, as you say, the summary questions at the end, are just as important as the saying the half a dozen, you've asked, we always say to clients, okay, that was great. But what makes you get out of bed in the morning? Why do you do what you do? And that gets a fantastic range of answers, whether it's people like, oh, because I love my dog, and I want to do this or, you know, obviously, I love my family. But sometimes you get the most incredible answers and instead of someone saying, "Oh, I just like helping people". Yeah, that's great, we all do. But you get amazing responses to a question like that, and you go, there's your summary. That's the key at the end, it's terrific.

Sally Green 13:46
That's really interesting. And getting people to be honest, I mean, there's also nothing wrong with actually, like I did, saying, you've done something wrong. That's deeply appealing to viewers. I mean, obviously, if you're saying I'm a brain surgeon, and occasionally I mess up, that's probably wrong. But for a lot of people, it makes them feel "oh, look, they are like me. And not only that about me, but I can see them on film. And they really are a human being. And they're not just this strange person who writes blog posts". You know, it's just a real person that you could hug.

David Camburn 14:17
Absolutely Sally, I saw it the other day. A friend of mine is a great storyteller. He had a film made about him and in the middle of it or towards the end, his dog barked, his dog was sitting down and you know, "Oh, sorry, that's the dog". But it was great because the film, the editing, they left that in. So there you go. That's human. He's got a dog. Yeah, we like him already. The dog's barking, fantastic!

Sally Green 14:37
Yeah, I mean, zoom, I think is kind of changed us really because I've got two cats, and they quite often join me. And you know, before we before the pandemic, not that this is necessarily good, but before the pandemic, we were all going oh my god, you got to have a blank background. Everything's got to be completely silent, and the pets will have to be shot. But now people don't mind really if the cat arrives and you know you've got a tail up your nose. It makes it more appealing.

David Camburn 15:03
It does, we all remember that famous BBC One where the guy was was talking and the children coming in the background and the nanny's trying to drag them out. There you go. There's authenticity. And some people go "that's terrible, it's not professional". No, it's authentic. It's human.

Sally Green 15:18
I mean, it's not something you should kind of try and make up. Don't shove your cats into the screen. But if it happens, it happens.

Sam Birkett 15:25
Yeah, definitely. Well, actually that quite neatly sort of moves us on to segue across to, you were saying about the pandemic Sally and I was very interested from a filmmakers, video producers point of view, what COVID has done in the last couple of years. I mean, have you noticed anything, in particular, David, in terms of what clients are asking for, the volumes that they're asking for, have there been any major changes or unexpected changes that you've discovered due to the pandemic?

David Camburn 15:52
Yes, well, I was talking to Sally earlier and yeah, I mean, for us, one of the key things we did, we built a studio because we couldn't go out and about, we were locked down. So therefore, people started having hybrid events, or hybrid contact, Zoom was great. But a lot of companies went out, you know what, the quality is not right for us, we want to do conferences, we've got to be hybrid. So that's been really, really wonderful for us because it's been a huge growth area, that and the other area and study knows about this, because we've discussed, the education sector for us just exploded, we were lucky at the start, we had a lot of editing. So we were able to do that. Now we have sort of break in lockdown and everything, we were very, very careful, obviously, very COVID regulation strong. But we were able to go into places like Oxford and Cambridge University and do a lot of filming, schedule a lot at the same time because we knew we were probably going to be locked down again, which means we could then go and edit that. But online courses in the education sector, the universe has absolutely exploded. It's been huge, huge growth area. And I think for a lot of these institutions that we now talk to face to face lecturing is important to them. But they've realised they now have another stream as well because a lot of students can come in from abroad so therefore they have to get the message out. And that has been huge.

Sally Green 17:21
Yeah, and online learning is growing enormously, there's a lot more people who are doing executive courses online. So there are kind of busy financial directors doing their courses online at their own speed. And I think that too has exploded.

David Camburn 17:36
Oh definitely. I've done it myself and you know, some new camera technology comes out, I'll sit on YouTube in the evenings and learn this learn this stuff. It's wonderful and the great thing about we were saying in online videos that you can watch it any time of the day, anywhere in the world. You don't have to travel which, I mean travel is fun, it's great and broadens the mind. But sometimes it's just great to sit down at seven o'clock in the evening, right? I mean, the great American series Masterclass, which is just fantastic because there's so much out there, it's wonderful.

Sally Green 18:10
Yeah, absolutely. And you forget how much watching it makes it so you can learn quicker. It's all very well reading in a book. But actually, if someone's speaking it and you know, gesticulating and all those things, it goes deeper. And I think it probably goes into a different bit of your brain. That visual kind of relationship you're having with your learning is key.

Sam Birkett 18:34
Yeah. It's I think it's that, I suppose that's why the motivation or people who perhaps, maybe hadn't considered putting things on video, online in general, or perhaps they'd been Avid sort of blog writers, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you know, writing blogs, of course, but if you do that, maybe if you think about repurposing a version in video, for example, and then you're appealing to different types of learners aren't you. Different types of your audience who take it in. But I suppose part of it is that sometimes people think and I've worked with people in the past few things a bit of a challenge. Oh, gosh, yeah, like we said at the top, you know, video, but how do we get this across in a video but of course, I don't know in terms of the latest stats, but I mean, the explosion in people, and we will do it in our day to day lives, certainly as you say you need to understand how to, I don't know change your windscreen washer on your new car, you know, it's like, how do I do that? I'd like to watch a quick video on my phone to understand how it's done. And I mean that I suppose there's such a huge increase in people asking for those sorts of jobs as well at the moment, it means that there's so much content going out there so that the challenge is differentiating as well isn't it really, or being the most useful, the best-produced piece of content, but I do think there's a challenge with that really, in terms of the amount of content out there.

David Camburn 20:02
Yeah, absolutely Sam. Because one of the key things is a lot of companies look at what they were doing, and realised they could do things in a lot of different ways. And also, people wanted to change their lifestyles, the whole commuting thing went out the window. So companies were changing. And so all of a sudden, we found, so the first quarter of this year was a lot of planning a few bits and pieces, the second quarter has absolutely exploded, because the code of restrictions of the East and now a lot of companies have gone well, actually, we want to do this. And as you say, one of the great ways of getting that message across this video. At least, it's exploded, because companies have all gone in different directions. And I suspect you and Sally have seen this with marketing. We've seen a huge explosion with marketing companies. All of a sudden companies have gone, we don't do that anymore, we now do that. You go. Wow. The potential that had been unlocked is astonishing.

Sally Green 20:57
Yeah, that's right. I mean, one of the things I think, which frightens people, also my clients from film is people go, Oh, it's just going to be too expensive. Because they think you're going to arrive with lights, camera, action, makeup trolleys, and you know because they think it's going to be like a film. And it can be not that expensive. If you do it properly with people like you.

David Camburn 21:17
Well thank you, that's very kind. Yeah, I mean, it's thinking about scale. So people think, oh, goodness, yeah, that's X, whatever amount of money and that is quite expensive. That's a large part of our marketing budget, which it is, but then it's not about one film. So in the old days, people didn't get a new film from our website. Yeah, yeah. But you're gonna get so much else. Because we always say to them, Listen, if you're assembling staff, or testimonials, talk about testimonials till the cows come home, because they're absolutely key, get other people to talk about you, and praise you. But you do a day's filming, it's not just one film, you should have enough material there to last months and months and months because you're going to have so many sound bites, hopefully, lots of what we call B-roll, lots of different shots of well of the, wherever the company is based or their activities, you can reversion so many times. And I think that's really the key, because one of the things that I always guide against is if you go onto LinkedIn, as it did this morning, you'll scroll through, you'll see half a dozen to a dozen people talking into accounts, which is great. And that's absolutely brilliant. But after you've seen that three or four times, you're just scrolling through where something fresh and dynamic comes on. And you go, ooh that's slightly different.

Sally Green 22:42
Yeah. You do need some B-roll activity. Sometimes, you know, you do want a big wave to crash or something to happen. That's else that's not about the conversation you're having.

David Camburn 22:52
Absolutely. Because again, it brings it to life. So if we were in filming with, say a company in Oxford, let's show Oxford. What's happening today? It's a lovely sunny day in Oxford, we've got these beautiful historic buildings, immediately you're drawn in. Because it's just not someone talking. It's like, oh, this is really interesting. Ooh, what's happening in Oxford today? You know, it's...

Sally Green 23:14
Yeah, that's right. And moreover, I'm not saying you ever cheat, David. But you know, if it's not sunny in Oxford, you can give the impression that it is so you can warm things up.

David Camburn 23:26
Again. Well, at the end of the lockdown, one of my crew and I spent a day going around Oxford, shooting all the historic buildings. So now you've got a library there a big library. So if somebody goes, again, it's a way of saving money and keeping costs down because instead of having to go and film all that again for a company, you just say to them, Well, look, this was it wasn't a bright, sunny day. It wasn't a dull day, but it's not time specific. We can add some lovely Oxford historic B roll. There we go.

Sally Green 24:01
Exactly. And Oxford isn't going to change anytime soon. So as you say it's going to last forever.

Sam Birkett 24:06
Well, that's it everyone thank you very much for listening today. In the meantime, if you want to keep in touch you can find us @meanderspod on Twitter, or you can get to us on Facebook. You can also email us which is meanderspod@gmail.com So hope to see you or hear you or for you to hear us next time anyway and good luck everyone. Take care bye for now.