Back from Budapest

We're back from Hungary where we've spent five days shooting and editing a promotional film for a new masters degree programme in European Youth Studies. The M.A. will eventually be delivered by a group of universities across the continent, including staff at the University of Glamorgan, here in Wales.

Before the full M.A. programme gets going, a group of students and academics met up in Budapest to road-test some of the course content and teaching methods. Our brief was to film this short course and create a video that would promote the idea of a Europe-wide postgraduate course that is really revolutionary in both content and the way it's delivered.

Challenges included a fast turnaround (we started shooting as the particpants arrived and we had a finished film to show them on the last night); multi-lingual interviews with translation, subtitles etc and... a very tight budget.

Fortunately, "corporate videos" needn't cost a fortune. We can shoot and edit ourselves, which keeps costs down if required. We used a Sony Z7 camera and edited on Final Cut Pro. We also work as unobtrusively as possible. The sequence at the youth project in central Budapest was actually shot on a "Flip" handheld camera. They cost less than £100.  Using the Flip meant we could work in a very small - and dark - office without bringing in lots of lights and equipment. And that meant we didn't get in the way.

Whatever the budget - and whatever technology we use - we want our films to be editorially strong, so Penny worked hard with the clients to develop a script that gets the main messages across.

Take a look at the film - and if you think your organisation could make use of a promo video like this, please get in touch. We'd love to hear from you!