Working With Animals
January 10, 2020
January 10th 2020 by CH
Read time: 3 mins
https://www.ch-video.com/portfolio/ch-christmas-video-2019/
“Never work with children or animals” – William Claude Dukenfield
We’re all about making exciting, engaging and clickable content here at CH, and sometimes that can mean working to a difficult brief. Even if we come up with the idea ourselves!
Back in December 2019, we decided to enlist some of our furry friends for starring roles in our annual Christmas video (who doesn’t love to watch cute dogs mess about?)
To give the content purpose, we wanted to help raise donations and support for a local animal shelter in Berkshire ( DBARC ), so we linked through to their page as well.
Working with dogs was a first for us.
But after some initial teething problems (excuse the pun), we learnt a few things:
Food is the Director
It doesn’t matter who speaks, the person holding the treats is the one in charge. When working with dogs or generally trying to get a dog’s attention, don’t go empty handed!
Dogs Don’t Love Cameras
Most dogs have no interest in looking down the lens. This makes that cute puppy eye shot tough to achieve. But using a long lens (135mm) is the best option for getting those all-important close ups.
Just ‘Go with it’
No matter how much you plan ahead, it rarely goes to plan! We started our day with roughly three different ways to film (with no idea whether we could get any of it) and had to abandon the complex shots on the day, simply because some of our stars didn’t feel like doing a particular trick when we needed them to.
When you’re working with dogs or any animal – be flexible, have plenty of rest breaks, respect their needs and allow them to do what they do best.
As a result of our Christmas video , DBARC received over £800 in donations and the video itself has had over 15k views on their Facebook page.
In conclusion – shooting (and editing!) this video was really fun for us as a team but best of all, it was for a great cause. Win win.
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We're thrilled to announce that we won not one, or two, but THREE Lens Awards at Communicate Magazine's prestigious awards event. We won awards for best One-off Video Campaign (Bronze) and Best Lifestyle and Wellbeing (Gold) for our work with Essity , a global hygiene and health leader that trusted us to transform essential H&S by producing a fresh and memorable induction video for visitors to their historic Oakenholt Mill. Delivering key messages with humour and heart, our approach stars children from real Essity employees as the mill’s pint-sized operators. It was a silver for Best Live or Experiential Video, celebrating our cinematic event work with PepsiCo . The Away from Home team’s breakout room at an international conference contained five ultrawide 4K screens stretching nearly 30 meters. Where we delivered 20 videos and nearly 70 assets overall, blending real footage, AI generated visuals, and synchronised side-screen magic. A panoramic feel that supported our client’s event in a whole new way. Thank you to our awesome team of in-house creatives. Photographed, a delegation from CH attended the event on behalf of the whole company.
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