We were commissioned by Edinburgh based personal trainer, Adam Towler, to produce a social media content creation package which he could use as to attract new clientele in the city.
The initial brief was to create something which built gradually, encompassing outdoor spaces and being present in a moment, transitioning through an urban context into an intense section of workout footage.
Adam would do a voiceover but didn’t want to appear scripted, fake and wooden. Being genuine was key for him.
I selected Portobello Beach and Holyrood Crags as locations, based on content I’d seen in Adam’s social media feed, so I knew it already had a level of brand integrity. This would, naturally, be subject to weather restrictions and as it happened, the shoot day was confirmed 11hrs before the eventual call time, grabbing an early morning weather window. The plan was determined on the relative position of the locations to the sunrise and sunset. So that determined a 0830 start at Portobello for sunrise and the aim was to get golden hour at 1530 on the crags, with the gym section in the middle. In the end, the clouds closed in at midday but the early darkness meant that we got a nice blue-grey light at the top, showing the lights of the city below. So it worked out well even if it wasn’t what was hoped for.
The gym section was filmed in a fairly simple manner, just using one portable LED panel light in a room with all other lights turned off. That gave me all sorts of opportunity for dramatic lighting, contrast, flares, silhouettes, etc without any real difficulty or time spent on rigging and derigging lighting set ups. We got a shed load of footage in this bit, but that isn’t a problem as our social media content creation package includes a folder of screenshots from the total footage library, so even stuff which doesn’t make the film edit still has value.
As for the narrative, well I got Adam to send a list of the sort of points he wanted to communicate in the video and I just asked a lot of questions until the answers popped out in a way which I felt hit the target. Then it was a case in the edit of just sifting, shaving, rearranging and using voice to compliment visuals to communicate the full message.
Adam was a great client, not least because I sent him the links for the music libraries and he found a few tracks for me to choose from, which saved a world of time. Thankfully he has good taste. He was also totally up to throw himself into whatever situation our interpretation of his vision demanded, which included very cold water.
Since launching the video on Instagram, it has grown Adam’s following by 15% in a few days (to 550), generating 669 views & 81 likes (12.1% engagement rate, assuming all the views are unique, which they may not be). Further screenshot photos, which are too low resolution for large print format but fine for instagram, are already generating further levels of engagement and consistency of brand with the main film.
If you would like to speak to us about how we could bring out social media content creation services to bear for your business, get in touch today