I was asked to create a showreel with the purpose of being screened on loop at a launch party in the Basement Bar in Brighton.

The brief was quite open with a few specifics: there would be ten artists displaying kitsch / fifties work, 2 DJ’s playing and a Lindy Hop teacher hoping to be tutoring Brighton’s biggest class and finally the title of the evening was ‘Phwoar’. The video work should be in keeping with these elements and no less than two to three minutes long.

I saw it as a great opportunity to be involved with something fun, that stretched my skills and would unquestionably make me approach the software I had been using in a completely different way.

I went straight to the library to look for books on fifties: kitsch, architecture, décor, fashion, and films. Whilst I was looking through shelves a little square book about signs and symbols caught my eye. It was a book full of simple black fill characters and objects, and seemed to perfectly fit the imagery I had imagined when I wrote the proposal. Even though it wasn’t fifties related it would turn out to be a valuable part of the edit.

The next day I started the arduous task of digitising the images I had gathered the previous day. It hadn’t been the most modest lending of books, and I had left with a whole armful of potential material. As you might imagine, this part isn’t terribly interesting to read about and consisted of, ‘turn the page, choose the image, scan the image, save, repeat’. A process much punctuated with tea, it took me a full three days. At one point I had discussed with my flat mate what I was working on, and she proudly and rather generously produced another three books, to which my heart sank, as I knew I couldn’t resist the urge to leaf through them…just in case. They were, of course, fantastic and I added them to the pile.

The scanning over with, I felt that a few hundred found images, when put together, might seem a tad two dimensional, in the descriptive sense, so I started to look else where for treats. The Internet seemed the next obvious place to route around in and I added a few more hundred images and footage from old films to my already diligently sub divided and titled folders.

At this stage my head was buzzing with ideas and full of ways to approach the edit. I was ridiculously keen to get started, having spent so much time preparing the material.

My first day was by no means a waste of time but I didn’t achieve much more than putting every single idea I had into the timeline. It looked like an utter muddle, but it was a starting point at least. Among the ideas that didn’t make it were using footage I created. I had fresh in my mind the ‘Sledge Hammer, Peter Gabrielle video’ and thought a talking animated head might look quite cool. It didn’t quite fit with everything else I had gathered and it was cut early on. Other ditched ideas consisted of a free-floating pair of sunglasses to wander across the screen, and elaborations on certain ideas, that when simplified, worked way better.

I knew I wanted to create something that constantly moved and entertained the viewer, even perhaps make them laugh, so I started to go though the images one by one and discounted any that didn’t fit that criteria. I quickly realised that purely by accident I had quite a few images that could be run sequentially and perhaps even lend themselves to an animated style.

I had really started to enjoy the edit and everything was just falling into place, which is a real blessing for us creative types, as we do tend to get disheartened and indeed blocked when an obstacle presents itself. Much like a writer trying to achieve a certain amount of words for an essay, after a full day I decided to look and see how many minutes I’d managed to fill. I was, to put it mildly, rather shocked when I discovered I’d edited a whole 35 seconds. Big sigh followed!

Still I was enjoying what I was working on and that’s a major plus for me. So often I work on an edit with tight constraints and I have no creative freedom, or the subject matter is so dull it could send you to sleep on five red bulls. This edit, on the other hand was actually keeping me from sleeping through the night with ideas and drive, I hadn’t felt this excited by a project for a while.

Four days later I had a finished a 2 minute and 30 second piece of work I was proud of. I still changed tiny details for the next three days of course, but finally managed to let it go and sent it to my client.

My work will be shown on 12th February at Phwoar , venue – The Basement Bar.

Read more about me and my work here.

After leaving university she went on to create websites and training packages for blue chip clients such as MTV, BT, JP Morgan and the British Council.

Lucy has a passion for ideas-based design and believes in content driven websites. She is an expert on the WordPress content management system as it allows flexibility to make her original ideas work in practice.

Lucy understands the web and how regularly updated, interesting content can drive visitors to a website.

Lucy always has a sketchbook to hand and believes that drawing is an essential part of the ideas process.

Find Lucy on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Contact Lucy about your web project at lucy@wedoideas.co.uk.

Angie moved away animation but retained her love for moving image, finding her calling as camera operator and video editor. She has been creating high quality video products ever since. Angie has filmed and edited video for many Blue-Chip companies including: Deloitte, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bovis Lend Lease. She has produced more than 70 corporate live events from concept stages through to final edit.

Angie has filmed live feed for conferences, award ceremonies and also many live events including: theatrical productions, conferences, interviews for film and book launches, video testimonials and promotional videos for businesses.

Find Angie on LinkedIn.

Contact Angie about your video project at angie@wedoideas.co.uk.

We Do Ideas for Video

Our biggest challenge yet has been to collate all of our work at We Do, to make a fresh and energetic video for all our clients to view.

Our client base is so diverse that each video we have worked on has come with its own unique set of challenges, and sometimes exciting locations. We have filmed from a helicopter, inside a lift shaft, strapped cameras to our heads and flung ourselves from great heights to get the perfect shot!

We Do filmed, edited and optimised a web showreel of our original ideas for video. To request a full length DVD showreel please complete our contact form.

We’re always available to talk about video, so drop us a line or complete our contact form. Or, read more about the videos that We Do.

We Do Ideas for Websites

We Do worked with Maverick Children’s Books to achieve a high Google ranking for all of their book titles. Through studying their business model we had the original idea to get the characters from their books blogging!

No other children’s books publisher has done anything similar and the website has achieved great success, not just in the search engine rankings but also with visitors to the site.

We Do created a custom WordPress theme for Maverick Books. The design is fun and lively and the site has constantly updated content.

We’re always available to talk about websites, so drop us a line or complete our contact form. Or, read more about the WordPress websites that We Do.

We Do film for marketing, producing a powerful promotional tool for your product or company. All videos can be either viewed on DVD or compressed for website content. We Do optimise, upload, tag and categorise your video content to make you more visible to your customers on the web, producing search engine results.

Our past video projects have seen us filming intranet productions to encourage enthusiasm within a company structure, video testimonials, promotional videos, and green screen introductions.

Examples of the videos which We Do film and edit include: green screen videos, corporate days, charitable events, theatre productions, interviews, intranet videos, promotional videos, live events and video testimonials.

We’re always available to talk about video, so drop us a line or complete our contact form.

We Do use the powerful WordPress content management system to power our websites. This gives you full control over all of your content. Combining your WordPress site with our web video products gives you a strong web presence with amazing search engine results.

Our design team can help you choose from thousands of pre-built WordPress themes or we can build you a completely custom theme from scratch. We Do create custom packages for you, based on your budget and requirements.

We Do install all of the plugins you need to make your website climb high in the rankings. Our specialist knowledge of WordPress allows us to use it to its full potential and We Do know that Google loves blogs.

Whether you want to create a simple video blogging website, or a large corporate website to showcase your products, We Do can help you. Get in contact today and tell us about your project.

We Do look forward to working with you to create your perfect web presence.

We’re always available to talk about websites, so drop us a line or complete our contact form to discuss how we can help you to become more visible on the web.

The We Do training team have created custom training sessions for many large corporate clients, including MTV and Titan Publishing Group. We have experience creating effective training packages for corporate and individual clients, achieving a high standard of learning outcomes.

All of our packages are created especially for you or your company. Contact us for more information about the training that We Do.

This is a basic list of the training services which We Do offer:

Web Design and Development

Learn how to design and build a custom WordPress theme for your website. We Do teach basic to advanced xhtml and css coding, as well as everything you need to build and manage your own WordPress website.

Final Cut Pro

We Do teach you how to import from a camera, add text, layer audio tracks with spoken word, manipulate footage and all the skills you need to create a professional movie

Adobe Photoshop

We Do teach you how to manipulate images, work with type, work with layers, apply filters and effects and export your images for web or print

Adobe Illustrator

Learn about working with vector paths and exporting your illustrations for print or web. We Do teach you how to create scalable logos and icons for your design work.

Adobe InDesign

We Do teach you how to create print ready documents using this powerful publishing tool. Explaining pagination and layout as well as all of the professional features which this software has to offer.

We’re always available to talk about training, so drop us a line or complete our contact form.