As we are hurtling towards Stuck Up Films’ two-year anniversary, (26th of January, so mark your calendars and start wrapping your presents folks) Mitch and I have been looking back on what we’ve accomplished over the past two years, but also looking forward to what we want to do more of in our third year together. As next week's post will delve into the two years of Stuck Up Films, celebrating the past and hyping up the future, I didn’t want to detract from that in this week's post, however, I did want to talk about something celebratory, and where better to start than our first client project,
The Cake House!
Much needed context
Stuck Up Films is a very different beast today from how it was in the early months of 2022. For one, we were both still in college, the company was composed of three people, rather than the dynamic duo you see today, and most importantly, we weren’t even a company! We had only an Instagram of 20 followers and a name, to our… well… name. (Find out about why that name’s origin, and lots of other interesting tidbits in next week's blog)
As college students in need of experience and content to expand our portfolio, we decided to message businesses in our local area to see whether they would be interested in a short promotional video for their Instagram.
The Cake House, in Newcastle under-Lyme, responded pretty quickly!
Pre-production and production
Pre-production was very different to how we work today. There were no consultation calls, no storyboards created, no reference videos, just a simple DM consisting of, “What time are you free to discuss ideas and to shoot?”
If I remember correctly (editor Mitch feel free to tell me I’m wrong), the ‘discussion’ of what our client wanted consisted of a ten-minute chat at the Cake Shop during our break from college, and the shoot was the next day (also in our college break). So when most people were playing football and going home for lunch between classes, we were filmmaking! - or at least trying to.
Editor’s note: For a shoot at a cake shop in my lunch break, I sure did go back to class without any food in me.
We shot on my Canon EOS M50, and used Mitch’s ring light from home. Picture the scene, three videographers with 1 tiny camera all scurrying around a small shop to film the cake-making process. Was it fun? Yes! Was it impractical? Yes!
We filmed the whole process of baking a cake, the egg cracking, the whisking, the blending etc, even coming back the next day after the cake had come out of the oven to film the decorating process.
Looking back at the production side of things, we loved it. The feeling of filming something independently, and for a client who was so lovely and important to Mitch and I as being the first person to let us create video for.
The completed advert
Mitch and I didn’t edit the video surprisingly, that was down to an old member of SUF, Ben. He edited on CapCut, on his phone, something that is a stark contrast to the Premiere Pro and Davinci Resolve we use today.
The advert was loved by the client, and looking back was loved by us. Yes, there are a multitude of things we would do differently if we were to do it again, such as using a better camera, lighting setup, a stronger edit and an improved colour grade. Despite that, I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished!
Looking forward
It’s no secret that we’ve not done an abundance of advertisements since the early days of Stuck Up Films, this is due to educational roadblocks, life roadblocks, and our recent focus on music content, such as music videos and live music video production. However, in our time through College, University and general independent work, we feel like we have all the tools to create advertisements again, but not only that, at a quality leagues above what we created for the Cake House way back then.
Therefore, our third-year resolution, something we are going to strive to stick to and accomplish by this time next year, is to make more advertisements for companies, something that reflects what we are as a company today
So stay tuned, make sure you read next week's blog (it’s shaping up to be something special) and thank you for reading - Tom :)
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