“I made friends because of The Swan.. And I hate making friends”

We’re delighted to have worked with management at the Swan Youth Project in Hertfordshire to help tell the story of how they provide fun, yet enriching youth services for 10 – 18 year olds.

“It’s my normal, it’s my everyday life, it’s where I go when I don’t want to be annoyed with my brother” says one regular at the youth centre during an interview on cam.

We observed inspiring impact, dedicated workers and amazing youth engagement as we joined the centre for two shoots in January this year. It was brilliant to work in an environment whereby entertainment can be so seamlessly complimented with learning experiences for members of a youth club. The Swan seems to have perfected this formula down to a T… Which made filmmaking on message – a breeze!

At the start of any film project it’s imperative to know exactly why you’re making a film and what you want the messaging to be. This informs everything that comes next, from the shots you schedule to the Discussion Guides you create for interviews.

But what is truly the Studio You way is to not let this Brief restrict the art of the possible! It was quite clear whilst shooting at the Swan that two shorts were forming…. and whilst the video above was intended for funders to see the value The Swan brings to young people, we also had enough material for a “Get Involved” video directed, not at funders, but at the young people themselves…. with no adults!

Studio You London is part of Social Enterprise Lens Change ltd, where we care passionately about giving voice to amazing causes like The Swan. Sometimes film in itself is a vehicle for change, other times it’s a vehicle for placing a spotlight on the great change that’s already happening out there in our communities, to help further their cause.

For more social action projects check out our Lens Change portfolio at http://lenschange.co.uk/project-feed/ Please contact *protected email* to discuss discounts for charities and not-for-profits.

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“Keep your head in the clouds” :: Filming networking events for the Trinnovo Group

From AWS server security to the representation of women in devops “Keep your head in the clouds” was the first Q&A & networking event we filmed for Trinnovo. The group is made up of three fantastic brands in recruitment:  Trust in Soda, Broadgate Search, and BioTalent. What all three brands have in common is they put on AWESOME socials in the industry niches they work in. Our filmmakers set out to capture the diversity, energy and incredible sense of community that is present at these fast-paced events.

What our clients like most about the presence of our filmmakers at these events is that they can trust us to “blend in” but also to be professional in arranging informal interviews with attendees. We create a new discussion guide for each event so that we always ensure our questions are relevant and fulfil the brief.

Another advantage of our filmmaking packages is that once the quote and time is locked down we can often cut multiple films with the footage we’ve captured. For example for Women in Devops – using our shoot and edit packages we delivered 1) This short 2-3 minute promo, 2) A full continuous 90 minute version of the talk and 3) A 1 minute cut for Instagram.

When capturing a narrative for events, we dont’ have to just be in showcase mode capturing the positives of this type of event, this is always useful for marketing but it can be just as useful for your marketing strategy, to capture additional content at events like this that’s super shareable, e.g. “top 10 tips for being a woman in devops” etc. etc. All things we’re exploring in our future collaborations with Trinnovo.

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Promoting the annual session for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly

Documentary style promotional films are some of our bread and butter here at the studio, but this was no ordinary brief! We’ve just completed a short film to be used to invite delegates to the 2019 annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (PA), which on NATO’s 70th anniversary, is to be hosted here in London by UK Parliament. Host countries of the annual session take great pride in creating a promotional film that will communicate the values of the host country and the objectives of the summit. So it was a great honour to be asked to create this film for the NATO PA. Working across two shoots with MP Richard Benyon and the President of the NATO PA Madeleine Moon, we used direct-to-cam shoots to create the narrative of the piece.

Approaching this film project

Once the narrative was in place we worked with the Imperial War Museum to source footage of the original NATO treaty signing with US president Harry Truman to share some of the history behind NATO at this 70 year anniversary. The MOD, Visit Britain and Visit Scotland also being fantastic sources of archived material to help bring this conference invitation to life visually.

Multiple film formats for promoting the conference

The outputs for the project were vast and the edit process included the transcription of subtitles in English and in French; square film formats for social media posting; and shorter 1 minute film cuts to cater for a variety of different usage scenarios. The feedback on the film has been fantastic and we hope it plays an important role in showcasing British Values to the world and plays a key role in communicating the objectives of the conference to delegates.

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Video background assets helping to bring webpages to life

We’ve had three super creative jobs on recently all of the same ilk – creating moving image background assets (no sound – visual only) to embed and autoplay within background elements of web pages. It has been a joy fulfilling these briefs for 1) the fantastic Camden Collective, 2) alt.cmd one of their sister projects focussed on new ways to invest in public good and social progress and 3) A Greater Source – An international technology recruitment agency based in Shoreditch. Our commissions take many forms – from being out with the camera and helping tell a story of the brand visually, to fulfilling edit-only roles to stylise clips and optimise for the quick load times needed on the web. For all three of these projects we’ve fulfilled the creative brief specifically and co-ordinated with the client’s own existing developers / agencies to fulfil to desired formats, on-time and on-budget

Alt.Camden: alternativecamden.com
This was a really fun brief for us as it included the shoot and edit of the material to be featured in the asset. Our filmmaker worked to capture moments around Camden where the video clip started out looking as if it was just a still image before something in the composition comes to life with some subtle movement. This can work really well on sites and has even been used by big players like Airbnb to give that powerful and memorable first impression when visiting a new website. In practice capturing these moments can require a lot of patience, for us it was leaving the camera rolling and waiting for a bird to fly, a bus to drive by, or that perfect gust of wind to bring movement to a poster or flag. Technically the approach also requires the perfect exposure settings. Specifically composing with a low ISO ensures there is no “noise” in the image that would give away to the website visitors that they are looking at a film and not a still image. Check out the alt.camden website where you will see the video backgrounds being used across multiple pages on the site.

Camden Collective: camdencollective.co.uk
Camden Collective, a fantastic organisation supporting start-up businesses with workspace (and indeed home of our very own offices!), were looking for a video asset to feature as there hero image on their new website as they celebrate their 10th birthday! One of our filmmakers spent a morning in the co-working space to capture the vibrance of ‘the hub’. We focussed on capturing natural moments with members hard at work and having a good time in the process. We added a white overlay to the video so that the asset would be in-keeping with the new site’s design and also work as a background to a black header on top of the asset.

A Greater Source: agreatersource.com
We worked with the marketing team at A Greater Source to again bring that impact to a user’s first visit to the homepage on their new site. This commission was edit only and we sourced and licensed Adobe Stock material to compile together clips that showcase all of the different countries that A Greater Source operates in. For those Adobe Creative Cloud fans out there Adobe Stock is a fantastic tool, to browse stock clips before downloading them straight into your project watermarked for testing, before licensing clips there and then in Premiere. Clips available in both 4k & HD.

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The application design and development of a bespoke Proof of Delivery (POD) system has been the biggest and most exciting challenge yet for our developers! Affectionately named JITPOD this application has now become an integral part of day-to-day operations for our client. The hybrid application, optimised for handheld barcode scanning devices running Android, had many key requirements to ensure success. The application would need to work with large periods without a data connection (rural delivery routes), feature a very intuitive UI for users who aren’t as tech savvy; be suitable for night driving; seamlessly utilise Google maps API to display drop destinations and routes; and even feature a bespoke messaging system.

We’re immensely proud of the process we devised and the output of this Studio You ‘Originals’ project. The project required extensive collaboration with the client team’s own in-house IT department, who wrote an API for their pre-existing database for the first time. We provided API consultancy along the way and became a trusted extension of their own team’s output and skillsbase.

The twelve month process started with a discovery phase – whereby we immersed ourselves with operations and business logic on-site. The wireframes in the graphic above are just a small cross-section of the envisioning we carried out in this phase. We started with rough UI mockups to map out all aspects of the App including a robust user journey, required fields and validation needed. This process culminated into an interactive design demo using the application Marvel. Using Marvel designers can link exported jpgs of the evolving UI together using hotspots to provide a clear picture of how the app will work. During reviews the client and even end-users can then more comprehensively engage with the substance of the app so any pitfalls and opportunities in the user journey can be identified even before anything is build! Such an approach can really help keep dev costs down.

Upon design sign-off, and with Gannt Charts in hand – our front-end and back-end developments embarked on the six month development period for this ‘hybrid’ app. HTML5 is quickly becoming the standard for developing cross-platform web and mobile apps. Many companies favour web and mobile applications using HTML5 as it takes advantage of widely known/understood cross-platform web technologies eliminating problems with creating multi-platform native apps by speeding up the development process and reducing costs for developing multiple native apps.

HTML5 is better positioned for change and some believe that native apps are simply a bridging solution while web technologies catch up and are able to provide the rich user experience demanded on new platforms, although where deeper integration with the hardware or super fast performance is required then native should always be considered. For this project however we recommended that HTML5 was, marginally, the way to go. We built using the Apache Cordova framework. Cordova is a mobile application development framework which enables us to wrap a HTML/JavaScript app into a native container which can access the device functions of several platforms. These functions are exposed via a unified JavaScript API, allowing us to easily write one set of code to target nearly every phone or tablet on the market today and publish to their app stores. This opens up the open source options, in most cases, to integrate available plugin solutions which will help keep costs down and speed up the development process.

Twelve months on since project inception and the app is out in the field! Our team have even been out on overnight delivery drops with the client to see the app in action and to help capture areas for continued development. The current build features a ‘take a break’ timer for drivers to assist with legal obligations around driver breaks; a full inventory of all items on the truck; a check-in and check-out system for all items; a fuel tracker to help with accounts and reducing paperwork; distinction between deliveries and returns items. We’re very excited to see where we can take the application next with the client, with what we hope to be the start of a long-lasting partnership

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Branding process + new responsive website – all part of our pay monthly ‘Friend in me’ plans

Mischke is a talented wedding videographer and has been delivering high-end wedding videos to clients for the last 10 years. Mischke came to Studio You wanting to modernise her brand and create a new website that had the ability to show off her fantastic weddings work in all it’s glory. We got straight to work on the logo design and branding process. After exploring the client’s own creative vision we devised a range of sketched options, before funnelling down with the client into three creative routes to develop, mock-up and test further.

The perfect logo often consists of finding that perfect balance between originality and simplicity. For Mischke’s logo we found a powerful typeface that was both creative and professional and accompanied this with art-deco brand artwork for use on stationary and other print assets. Art-deco as a style was something particular resonate for Mischke as it presented that creative edge to her clients.

With the brand assets in place we designed up her new wordpress website with a clear website structure that would present both her weddings work and her off-season commercial more corporate work. We’re big believers in – if you’ve got it – flaunt it.. and Mischke certainly has a portfolio to flaunt. So we implemented full-width video widgets to head up each page to provide a powerful introduction to the diversity and creativity of her work. These widgets are set to autoplay and with muted audio which makes for a distraction free browse of the website.

Our ‘Friend in me‘ plans are perfect for freelancers and small business owners like Mischke. She can now focus on her weddings work whilst we technically maintain and keep her portfolio updated for her – all part of the same affordable 12 month plan.

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Creating a ‘pool’ of creative and digital assets is increasingly the way to go for marketing campaigns. This gives marketeers a range of communications to then utilise in their work during the marketing push for different scenarios and audiences. Having a range of film or photo assets also allows a consistent flow of engaging content to be posted over time on social media accounts. This helps build a story of the event and keeps followers engaged with new content appearing in their feeds.

Creating this content pool for JHI Marketing was one of our best examples yet of what can be achieved with our film & photo packages. JHI Marketing are a leading marketing consultancy in London specialising in promoting theatre productions and live events. Managed by their talented team & Joe C. Brown (fab producer of Strangers in Between & La Bohème at Trafalgar Studios), we attended a rehearsal and live production of one of their recent briefs – to promote the one man show – The Shy Manifesto featuring Harry Potter star Theo Ancient.

The content pool amassed the most content from a sold-out show at the Greenwich Theatre in London whereby one of our content producers captured BOTH video and photographic content. Now this one depends on the brief and time available to achieve. But for this brief this multi-format approach was perfectly feasible. Our DSLR camera opp had a seat during the performance to snap some great performance snaps (using a silent shutter of course!) and then immediately after the show sprang into action to capture a range of audience Vox-pops.


To capture truly authentic vox-pops contributions we approached each interview with both concrete ideas and openness. The ideas were to ‘describe the show in 3 words’ and ‘the plot in 60 seconds’. This created a focus for several standalone pieces of film content. Then through a simple discussion guide we asked for open audience reactions. This provided authentic material that could work as additional content for marketing efforts. Acknowledging that Harry Potter star Theo Ancient has his very own marketing appeal we created a range of ‘shout outs’ featuring Theo that could be utilised to promote the tour in local marketing.

You couldn’t make us a website for the show to could you? No probs! Our Sprints approach to websites makes it super easy and affordable to create that dedicated microsite to your cause or campaign. The focus of the theshymanifesto.com was to centralise tour dates of the show, which using the WordPress publishing platform can easily be updated and maintained by the client moving forward. SSL, Hosting, Domain registry all part of the wholistic service the Studio You team provides – creating your content pool and then establishing a content hub to feature it.

All the team wishes Theo and the creative team the best for the remainder of the tour run. The show really is a captivating and cathartic one man masterpiece exploring a poignant theme that often goes unexplored: The human conundrum of shyness.

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Jessie Adams came to Studio You to totally reinvigorate the look of her online store. With six flawless issues of this fashion and culture mag already circulating the globe Jessie needed an aesthetic for her e-commerce website that was minimal, modern and most essentially – in vogue!

Using a combination of WordPress and WooCommerce our team worked to create a responsive online store and scaleable categorised blog where Jessie can share features from both issues of the magazine past and future. Check out the site and Jessie’s awesome work at https://theingenuemagazine.com

We’ve adored collaborating with Jessie and her art directors to create a consistent style guide for the site that ensures there’s the same level of design precision on her website as the high-end print copies.

As Jessie took advantage of our pay monthly plans to build and support the ongoing development of her website post-launch she was absolutely delighted to hear that unlimited content management support is included in the monthly cost. This allows Jessie to simply call into the Camden studio or ping us dropbox links to new features past and present. The Studio You London team then get them added to the website and looking ace within 48 hours. All of our websites come with a Content Management System for clients to administer their own content post-launch… but offering our own upload and optimisation service with our plans has proved a very popular option as it gives our clients more time to focus on what’s important – in this case Jessie’s print products.

Creating an online store does not need to break the bank. By offering e-commerce solutions via our pay monthly plans we really hope that these efforts will make e-commerce more achievable for the start-up business.

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Sharing the impact of your work is tough. The better a charity is at what they do; the more every single hour of everyday is used tirelessly at the coalface transforming lives and making a real world tangible difference. When the British Youth Council came to us with the brief of more effectively showcasing the impact of their work we had camera batteries charged and strategy ready.

Under our Lens Change social action brand (which gives charities access to reduced rates) we in-sourced one of our filmmakers into the British Youth Council team 3 days a month to follow them into the depths of Portcullis House to the highs of the Yorkshire Moores to capture the incredible breadth of British Youth Council training events.

The outputs included a range of films that they could report back to their funders with and show to their future ones. We worked closely with BYC to determine the best format for each audience and this lead to outputs including short documentaries, a series of storytelling films (like Damien’s below) and also a high-octane sting film which as we had so much material we thought why the hell not!

There were several reactive opportunities too including the emergence of two new national campaigns which came out of the ‘Annual Sitting’ in Parliament. Responding to their imminent need to encourage engagement with these campaigns we created several square 1 minute videos for social media to help their social media efforts.

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Alice in Wonderland, Metamorphosis and Mary Poppins are three of the fantastic vintage classics that Ana Moore has based her core homeware and textiles ranges on. Incredibly distinct and delightfully nostalgic. Ana’s store is going from strength to strength with her product ranges being endorsed and available on Amara and in the Amazon Marketplace. Despite this Ana was having problems with her existing website which she felt was looking dated, usability was waining and the aesthetic no longer reflected her brand.

Our key vision for Ana’s new site was to provide a completely new visual experience in two areas – 1) new and improved branding added throughout the site with a clean and minimalist approach and 2) New and improved ways to maximise the real estate for great new product visuals. A range of new lifestyle and clean product shots were added to better communicate to visitors exactly what the customer is buying.

But our involvement with Ana didn’t stop there oh no! We’ve supported Ana to establish a new e-mail solution after her previous one became ridden with spam, several new domain names with redirects, a new payment gateway to offer customers payments via Stripe and Ana also picked one of our after-support options so that we can manage the adding/editing/removing of products but also set up timely store discounts, coupon codes and other promotional activities that can supplement her PR efforts.

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