Capturing Design ‘Freedom’ at BDF 2022
We were recently hired by Birmingham Design Festival to capture the essence of their 2022 festival, themed ‘Freedom’.
The BDF Brief
Birmingham Design Festival (BDF), boasting an attendance of 10,000 guests across previous years, set out to exhibit the best of all things design and beyond once again in 2022. With a variety of ‘Hubs’ based across some Birmingham City University buildings, as well as an array of vibrant spaces in Digbeth, it was the perfect opportunity to capture all the creativity the event had to offer.
We were tasked with creating an engaging 3-minute video that encapsulated the very best of the three (and a half) day event, as well as a variety of shorter clips, immortalising the event for those unable to attend and for those who simply wanted to re-live the festival or experience the parts that they’d missed.
Birmingham Design Festival features over 100 events and more than 60 speakers in venues across the city centre.
The final videos would be shared across social media and the BDF website, to promote future events and as aforementioned, to offer an insight into this year’s creative festivities.
Here, there and Everywhere
The main challenge we faced was ensuring that we captured maximum coverage across the four venues (5-10 minute walk away) using just one videographer. Following the brief from the organisers, we had complete “Freedom” to create our own plan and to capture what we felt was highlight-worthy.
BDF Sponsor, Clarkeprint, showcasing ‘Freedom’ in print design
Sitting down with the event schedule allowed us to plan and divide our time across the main venues equally, capturing highlights from workshops, as well as the hustle and bustle around sponsor and festival stalls between talks.
Understanding the full event schedule allowed us to capture the best moments
Given the duration of the festival and the amount of footage we had predetermined would be recorded, we had to ensure that we had the correct setup to allow for such lengthy filming. This included multiple spare batteries, SD cards, memory storage, ensuring we were well prepared for any eventuality.
The Final Result
We ended up with 1400 individual film clips to be compiled into one segment and a series of shorter clips, suitable for various social media platforms.
In order to make the editing process as swift and efficient as possible, I collated videos (1,400 individual clips!) into folders, according to the day of the festival and from their thumbnails, and then colour-coded them to represent the subject matter; e.g. presentations, audience shots, workshops, and candid shots of attendees. This gave us easy access to the footage, without having to sift through each clip individually in its entirety.
With 1,400 individual clips to go through, it was important to be methodical and organised (photo of Lalita editing)
The event was an entertaining celebration of design, which made our job of creating engaging content much more fun! We were able to produce clips that authentically displayed the essence of the festival; from the dedication and community spirit of the volunteers, to the impact of renowned and distinguished speakers, and finally the hands-on involvement of numerous sponsors.
“Once again we were delighted to be working closely with Loop 454, who did a brilliant job filming our events. BDF is a dynamic environment and Lalita managed to capture great footage in multiple locations, seamlessly integrating into our team. We love what she captured!”
BDF 2022 Video and Photo Gallery
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