Our Roundup of 2022 – A Very Exciting Year!

It’s that time of year when we like to reflect on the past 12 months and take note of all the good things that have happened in 2022 – Like Southpoint films turning 9 years old! (Of course that means next year is the big one. And yes, we’re already planning how we’re going to celebrate.)

We were also thrilled to welcome Jamie to our team earlier this year. She joined into the brand new role of Production Coordinator. Jamie has really hit the ground running and is doing a fantastic job of organising all of our projects and liaising with our clients.

Then, to top it all off, our Managing Director Rowan welcomed a lovely baby boy into the world! And waved goodbye to ever having a proper night’s sleep again!

So, we would say that’s a lot to be thankful for. And that’s without even mentioning any of the fantastic projects we’ve worked on this year!

With plenty of new clients and lots of returning ones too, 2022 was an extremely busy year, full of exciting and diverse projects. Picking just a few was extremely hard, but we’ve given it a go. We were very lucky to have worked on over 150 different and amazing projects this year, which is around 3 and a half per week(!).

So without further ado, here’s our roundup of some of the projects that really stood out for us in 2022.

Portsmouth Cathedral – Live Stream

Back in March, we were asked to live stream the installation of the tenth Bishop of Portsmouth at Portsmouth Cathedral. It was a big event for the local community!

One of the great things about this stream was that the event utilised the full length of the beautiful, historic cathedral. In and of itself, this project deserves highlighting for the location alone.

However, streaming here wasn’t without its challenges. Specifically, we couldn’t run cables neatly between the two ends of the building for our cameras. (For some reason, the architects in the 1100s didn’t consider adding cable runs to their design!!)

To get around this, we deployed low latency Teradek wireless camera solutions to connect several of our cameras together. In the end, we used three fixed cameras (one of which was linked wirelessly), as well as a wireless roaming camera for close-ups of the action – including a brief section of the event which took place outside. The whole thing worked brilliantly, and we were able to stream the full event professionally online for everyone to watch.

Turbo Service International – Rotterdam Workshop Tour

Turbo Service International is a market leader in marine and power turbocharger repair and maintenance. In April we went over to TSI’s workshop in Rotterdam to provide a complete media package for the facility there.

International projects always stand out for our team, but this one well and truly highlighted what we do best at Southpoint Films. Over three days, we recorded interviews with TSI’s Rotterdam team, filmed a walkthrough video of their workshop, captured B Roll of their different processes, took hundreds of professional photos, and also produced a 360º VR tour (both stills and video).

All of this media was captured by one of our multi-skilled videographers, who handled the different requirements with ease. This reduced the number of people who had to travel, and kept costs down. It also reduced the complexity of the project for TSI, compared to booking a separate videographer, photographer and VR tour company.

At Southpoint Films, we’re a one-stop shop for everything video. And projects that let us demonstrate a variety of our capabilities are always some of our favourites. We strive to give our clients as much value from our work as possible, and this sort of project is where that ethos shines through strongest!

Motiv8 – Youth Filmmaking Workshops

In April we delivered two filmmaking workshops for Motiv8, a youth charity operating in Portsmouth, Havant, Gosport and Fareham.

The aim of the workshops was to provide professional creative education for young people in social support aged between 13-19. During these interactive workshops, participants were able to gain an understanding of the different styles of on-camera interviews, as well as develop a list of questions to ask, before filming the interview and editing it themselves afterwards.

This was a really important project for the team and one we were really proud to be asked to deliver. We love having the opportunity to work with young people, and to share our knowledge with them. If you’re involved with a youth organisation or educational institution and are looking for something similar, please don’t be afraid to get in touch!

Eurotank – Stuttgart Uniti Expo Video Coverage

This project was a big one for Hazel as It marked her first international job with Southpoint Films. It required her to fly to sunny Stuttgart in May to provide video coverage of the Uniti Expo for our longstanding client Eurotank.

The event was held at the Messe Stuttgart convention centre and is the leading trade fair for the retail petroleum and car wash industries in Europe. The halls were filled with companies and professionals from all over the world who enjoyed networking and learning about what the future holds for their industries.

In a brief 24 hour window, Hazel was able to film enough content to produce over 25 videos, which will be drip fed on social media as part of an ongoing marketing campaign by Eurotank.

Early Marketing, Finning & Caterpillar – Promotional Video

We were asked to produce two videos to highlight the largely unknown option of rebuilding a Caterpillar machine as opposed to buying new. Finning and Caterpillar wanted to promote the rebuild proposition as an option, both internally to the Caterpillar dealer network, and externally to clients.

There were several filming aspects to these videos. We filmed engineers working on CAT machines, we installed time-lapse cameras, we used our drone to capture aerial footage of the facility, we carried out virtual interviews, and we filmed plenty of B-roll footage as well.

When looking at our projects this year, this one quickly stood out. Not only were we in constant awe at the machines we were filming, but this project used so many different techniques, which exemplifies what we’re best at. It was also a project with lots of travel, with filming regularly taking place in Glasgow and Chesterfield. It was a truly nationwide project, which was often supported by our local crew members in various parts of the country.

In It Together and Lakefest Festivals – Outdoor Broadcast / Image Magnification Video Solution

This summer, we were extremely excited to land two festival bookings, which required us to provide crew and equipment for image magnification and public information announcements on the festival’s LED screens.

The first festival was in June for Escape Records’ In It Together festival. Headliners included Two Door Cinema Club, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Clean Bandit.

With a 40,000 capacity, and held at Margam, near Port Talbot, it was the first festival of its size in Wales!

Although we’ve provided camera crews to large festivals before, this was the first time we’d been approached directly to provide a full video solution. Over the Queen’s Jubilee weekend, we supplied a camera crew, 3 cameras, vision mixing equipment and a specialist broadcast production trailer. All whilst battling the wind and rain!

Then in August, we provided cameras and visuals for the LED screens at Lakefest in the Cotswolds. This was a 4 day festival and featured headline acts including UB40, Leftfield, Manic Street Preachers and Supergrass.

The weather for this one could not have been more different from In It Together festival. Instead of wind and rain we had heat and dust. But we still really enjoyed it, and our crew delivered a great show!

BOKS – Annual Global Conference, Toronto

Since 2020, we’ve been working with BOKS to produce video content for their different events and conferences. However, until earlier this year, all of these events have been virtual.

In September, we finally got the chance to work with the BOKS team in-person at their annual Global Conference in Toronto. As we mentioned earlier, international projects always stand out for us. The constraints of travel helps us to show off what we’re capable of!

In this case, we provided full video coverage of the event, with complete session recordings with embedded slides. We also captured B Roll for a highlights reel. This was edited and published before the second day of the conference, ahead of a fuller promotional video after the event. We captured interviews and other content for BOKS’ ongoing monthly video webcasts. And we also provided several hundred photographs throughout the event, which were available for the BOKS team shortly after each day wrapped. All of this was provided by one multi-skilled videographer!

In addition to the annual global conference, we’ve also worked with BOKS to produce monthly webcasts which update alliance members about upcoming events within BOKS. We’ve also been working with BOKS on their webinars, which ranges from editing recorded virtual presentations, to professionally live streaming the webinars with branding embedded throughout. (So much better than a typical Zoom call!)

Carswell Gould & Innovate UK KTN – KTP Awards Video Coverage and Live Stream

In September and October, we worked with integrated marketing specialists Carswell Gould to produce content for Innovate UK KTN’S 2022 KTP Awards. These awards recognise the people and partnerships behind the UK’s most inspiring and successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects, which bridge academia and business.

There were many aspects to our involvement in this project, which is why it really stood out as one to highlight!  Prior to the event, we were tasked with filming a series of interviews and case studies with award finalists. This involved travelling all over the UK, including to Belfast, to record interviews with shortlisted nominees. It also required us to interview dozens of nominees virtually, too. By the time we finished, we’d interviewed almost 30 people. No small task! These were shown at the event and used on social media.

At the event itself, which was hosted in Liverpool,  we live-streamed the awards to Innovate UK’s YouTube channel. We also produced a highlights video from the day to summarise the event and promote it in the future.

From our perspective, this project was a perfect example of our integrated video services. We were able to produce all of the pre-recorded content, deliver a high-quality live broadcast on the day of the event, and produce a high-impact highlights video.

Southpoint Films are delighted to be part of Carswell Gould’s Collective, which means we’re one of their trusted partners for delivering work for their clients.

As ever, working with the team was an absolute blast. Carswell Gould led the project and defined how and what would be made for the event. They planned and delivered the brand, event and marketing for the event and acted as pregame managers. Their team was fantastic at organising the interviews and it was great to collaborate with the graphics and creative team who made the on-screen graphics for the content.

You can read more about how the whole project came together in Carswell Gould’s case study (which our Managing Director Rowan features in) here.

It was another excellent collaboration between two Southampton-based creative businesses, both of whom are top of their fields! (If we do say so ourselves!)

STEM Learning – Protecting Our Planet Day 2022

Where do we start with this one?!

How about “a live stream for secondary schools across the country, live from the Boaty McBoatface hangar at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton, with live link ups to researchers in Antarctica, the RRS Sir David Attenborough at sea, the producers of BBC Studios’ Frozen Plant II, a researcher at COP27 in Egypt, and researchers in rainforests around the world.”

We were thrilled to be asked to run a full day live stream for STEM Learning UK (National STEM Centre)’s Protecting Our Planet Day on the 10th November. As you probably gathered, it was an incredibly ambitious and exciting event – which went incredibly smoothly!

In addition to the live stream, we also recorded and edited a full morning of parallel sessions for primary school students. This was broadcast simultaneously by the National STEM Centre in York.

Phew! What a proud moment for the team to see it all come together and to see all the tweets and photos coming in from schools watching the broadcast and taking part in activities. In terms of pure scope and ambition, this definitely had to be the wildest project we worked on this year. And we loved every minute of it!

And with that, those were some of our favourite projects this year.

There were far more on our list, but we’d have kept you reading here until December 2023 if we’d not stopped somewhere!

As you can see, 2022 has been a blast and we’ve already been booked for more exciting projects in 2023 and 2024. So if you have a project coming up, get in touch and get booked in.

We’re incredibly grateful to have had such a successful year. We’re really proud of the videos, live streams and other media we’ve produced. Of course, none of it would have been possible without the support of our colleagues, our team of freelancers, suppliers, people who’ve recommended us, and of course our lovely clients themselves.

Thanks to all of you!

We’re looking forward to making more great things together in the coming year!