EZRA

We’ve worked with EZRA since shortly after they launched, and they have quickly grown from strength to strength, amassing a team of top quality coaches from around the globe.

The brief was to produce a film that highlighted the benefits of professional coaching whilst showcasing how wide-reaching their coaching network is.

This project required filming in 6 cities around the world: London, Atlanta, Calgary, Toronto, Singapore and Munich. We were all very excited about the prospect of travelling to these locations, but Covid-19 restrictions in the different cities made this virtually impossible within our timeframe. So, we planned to work on a script/list of interview questions for the coaches alongside EZRA, shoot the London interviews and then use this footage to put together a style guide / visual brief for our production partners abroad.

We knew the coaches would have inspiring and personal stories to tell about their coaching journeys so we wanted the interviews to feel intimate. To do this we positioned the coaches centre frame and had them answer their questions directly to camera. We also used an 85mm lens and ND filters to ensure we could maximise depth of field and put all focus on the coaches with a clean/soft background.

In addition to the interviews themselves, we needed a selection of b roll to help smooth the transition between interviews and showcase each city. To do this we had a drone operator capture establishing shots of each city and a 2nd camera shooting slow motion of the coaches chatting with our team between takes.

Once we had completed the London shoots we put together a technical brief with equipment/format specs, framing guides, and the finalised interview questions. Then, after a few days research, a number of phone calls and a couple of PPM’s, we appointed 5 fantastic local production teams to carry out the remaining interviews in Toronto, Calgary, Singapore, Munich and Atlanta.

After all the interviews were conducted, we began the process of gathering and consolidating all of the footage from the various international shoots. In one instance we arranged a hard drive to be couriered but for the rest we downloaded the footage via a Dropbox folder and backed it up to our local server. This was a relatively laborious process but thankfully our office download speed is lightning fast.

The editing process itself was a time consuming but pleasant process. All of the coaches answered the same questions so it was a matter of sifting through the full length interviews and editing together a consistent narrative from the answers that complimented each other. There were plenty of great anecdotes from the interviews and we ended up with a 5 minute long edit of useable footage. Eventually we refined the edit to it’s current 2:20 duration and we’re super pleased with the results!