Richard & Stacie

We can’t say enough about how fantastic Solihull Council are at using video to deliver community updates and promote up and coming initiatives. Their use of video is so progressive and it’s always an absolute pleasure to work with them and the results with regards to community engagement have always been fantastic. 

This project was a great one to work on as it was a lovely storytelling piece about a couple, Richard and Stacie, who take time to go out to their local parks and pick up litter. 

Richard struggled to get about, so his wife Stacie bought him a mobility scooter which he proceeded to successfully modify into his little picking weapon of choice! 

The story was as much about a personal dedication and selflessness as it was about litter picking. Our job was to tell the story but also try and make people aware that Richard and Stacie were doing this out of the kindness of their own hearts, but they shouldn’t have to. 

We didn’t want people to pat them on the back, we wanted people to join in and make sure litter goes in the bin! 

Richard and Stacie are true local heroes. 

This was a project that shows just how much can be achieved in a small amount of time. We didn’t have days with Richard and Stacie to film this piece, we had a matter of hours as they were kind enough to give up their time to tell their story. 

With these kinds of shoots there really isn’t any kind of pre-production in regards to knowing what the interview location looks like etc. 

We go in blind not knowing if it’s going to be too dark or too noisy, luckily we have become quite adept with these kinds of situations, after years of walking into the unknown on literally hundreds of projects.  

We can usually tell within about 30 seconds if something is going to work or not and luckily Richard and Stacie’s living room was perfect! We got our interview set up sorted within one cup of tea ( Thanks Stacie ) and then we were ready to record! 

The interview was so easy as the story told itself and they were really lovely enthusiastic people, which always makes it easier to capture a genuine story. 

After the interview was completed it was time to hit the road, literally! Richard jumped on his scooter and away we went into the parks of Solihull to get some cut-aways to help give the story context. 

We went with a hand held approach in order to be as mobile as possible and even managed to get our small drone up for a shot or two to help raise production values. 

In regards to filming it was about 4 hours, if you are organised and know how to work with people great things can be achieved in a small amount of time. 

Loved this project and it had exactly the result we and the team at Solihull wanted, with messages of thanks and appreciation on the Councils Facebook and Twitter accounts.