Hastings Half Marathon - ‘When you can’t beat ‘em… ’
The first thing you should know about me is that, after this shoot, I signed up to run next year’s Hastings Half Marathon. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you the story…
The Hastings Half Marathon project actually came about thanks to another local videographer called Howie, from 28th Street Media, who had recommended me to a company called Nice Work. The company had an exciting spec they wanted to fulfil… and, as usual, when presented with a challenge I pricked up my ears!
The project required us to showcase so much more than the crowd-drawing Hastings Half Marathon – Nice Work wanted to showcase Hastings itself. And I absolutely understand the logic – what you can achieve with multiple ‘Visit Here’ leaflets and brochures, one video can often say it all - why not give viewers a whole multitude of reasons to visit the historic coastal town?
The difficulty would be… capturing it all.
The brief:
No, really, I’m not exaggerating when I say the spec was to do it all, and I loved that challenge! To me, this was like the Crystal Maze. To showcase the seaside town, the pier, the coastline, iconic landmarks, the race, the runners, the crowds, the supporters, the volunteers, the entertainment, all neatly packaged into a two minute ‘hype’ reel. Get the Crystal – GET OUT!! Their inspiration and the kind of outcome they were aiming for was akin to video coverage of the Paris and Lake Garda Marathons. An inspiring vision, I knew exactly what the end ‘product’ was and how to achieve it…
I had no doubt that , respectively, probably had teams of drone specialists, fleets of motorbike-riding camera-wielding operatives. And here I was, feeling like Tom Cruise, chomping at the bit to do all my own stunts… but that became part of the charm. The familiarity with the runners actually helped - it gave me access to more natural, close-up moments.. An intimacy that perhaps you may not have been permitted to see being part of a team.
Pre-production:
I have to say, the company were fantastic at communicating their wants and needs and making sure I was fully onboard with their vision. They provided extra material for me, including a list of key requirements to help me hone my creative decisions and streamline the focus. The prized shots were going to be the seaside town’s surrounding coastlines, the race village registration stands, bus volunteers, the Nice Work staff around the race village, shots of runners arriving, shots of runners warming up, stretching, close-ups, nervous excited smiles – capturing the magic of the event in all its entirety (and, if you’ve been following along with my blogs, articles and portfolio, you’ll know that it’s that specific human touch that really makes a project for me, too).
Considering how in-the-thick-of-it I was going to be, it was also absolutely crucial to see the half marathon’s route, and create a map of footage sites, specifying what would be caught at each location.
The pre-production was quite extensive for this shoot, and there was plenty to consider, from weather forecasts, to wind speeds, to the gear I could use on the move, to the event’s Health and Safety requirements and my own Risk Assessment. There were SO many moving parts, and pulling this off was going to be like throwing myself inside the mechanism of a working, ticking clock, with all the cogs turning at once.
The Living, Breathing Beast:
Usually on a shoot, I find somewhere to set up camp and create a base to work from – my gear can live there, I sometimes have a means of recharging equipment, or at least swapping out batteries etc.
This shoot was effectively an assault course, where the only way was forwards – onwards – upwards. There would be no coming back to base camp. Once the gun sounded (literally), I was off. It felt like I was about to cross ‘walking across Middle Earth’ with ‘taking part in an Ironman’ (if you know you know).
Timing was everything – I had to imagine myself as a team of people. I wasn’t going to limit myself to ‘one man, one camera’, so I set to work thinking about how I could be in all the places I needed to be, and how I could capture all the aspects I needed to.
At an event like a marathon, there are no do-overs; if I fumbled the shot I wanted of the start of the race, that was it. The moment was lost. If I arrived at a location along the course too late – boom, over. The stakes were high!
A-List treatment:
Susie and the team at Nice Work were incredible and had thoughtfully organised my own personal transportation to nip me around the route – which, in a town closed-off for a marathon, was no mean feat! Hats off to my amazingly knowledgeable and patient driver. Even knowing I was being chauffeured around and in what type of vehicle (honestly, I entertained thoughts of shooting from the back of a flat-bed truck, like I was shooting the next Mission Impossible) – all of it factored into the pre-planning. On my map of the route, I was taking into consideration the elevation of the land, working out what shots that would allow for – looking down over the crowds, etc.
It was daunting to be on-the-hoof for the entire shoot, having my own base being a moving car. But - you know me - I love to get creative!
Technical Challenges:
As I have mentioned, not only was I without a basecamp, and the driver and I were having to wend our way through a minefield of closed and diverted road routes, there was the challenge of capturing so many moving elements and in so many different ways.
For a spec that involved showcasing Hastings in all her geographical glory – landmarks, coastline, etc – it was obviously going to be a job for the drone. While we were blessed with a fine, sunny October day, the wind picked up as the day wore on, causing some issues for the drone.
When you look at video footage, of course it’s easy to see it at face value. In reality, there were so many technical considerations that went into the footage that day – and not just the drone footage! More on that soon… Part of the brief to showcase Hastings meant shooting the pier, which would be best from the air, which was also a great opportunity to capture the coastline. So it made sense to get out over the water, to look back on the town we were profiling. Now consider off-shore gusts of wind and having to push the drone to stay steady and get the footage you need (again, with some shots, there would be no opportunity to go again!). This often meant using more battery power just to keep the drone capturing the footage I was after, and on a day when I was on-the-go and didn’t have a base to recharge from – merry chaos!
Imagine me with leather sheaths for weapons across my chest, but laden with batteries, memory cards and camera equipment instead of grenades and rounds of ammo!
I didn’t look like that. I would have looked like a right action hero. But I did have a rucksack full of goodies instead.
Another issue was the actual chauffeuring. As grateful as I was to Nice Work for organising the transport, there was no doubt that it often took me away from the action I was trying to shoot. At the time, I wished I’d been able to get more footage from the midst of the marathon itself, poised on the back of a quad or motorbike or something, but instead, running alongside the runners actually spurred them on - as they could see I was putting in the effort for them! “We’re in it together!”
Something Unique:
This shoot was shaping up to be a creature unlike any other – from the extensive pre-production, the multiple caps I was needing to don (and the teleporting I was needing to do from place to place!), but also in the sheer creative thinking.
Seeing an opportunity, I actually set-up one of the runners with a body-camera, bringing incredible immersive footage from the frontline itself, and I’m so glad I did. I feel like it really paid off to have that perspective in the mix; this final video would not only show the sweeping shots of Hastings, and what it could offer to visitors; it would show the people you would meet and the character of the place; but then it also showed what you could experience – who you could be. Suddenly, we weren’t just watching the marathon, we were part of it. Many thanks to Thom for his running efforts and being such a great sport wearing a camera!
Hilariously – and this didn’t make the final edit for obvious reasons! – but I actually did become a part of it, when the runner wearing the body camera (Thom) caught me on film, as I shot from one of my locations along the route. Oops! So much for being as self-contained as possible – there I was doing a cheeky Quentin Tarantino and cameoing in my own film!
Honestly, the fluke of the timing that went into that moment. It’s a huge part of what makes shooting video so incredible for me – unscripted moments, human moments, and things that you just couldn’t fabricate or achieve in any other way at any other time. In what must have been two and a half thousand runners, I turned up just as he came running around the corner. Magic!
When you can’t beat ‘em…
Despite my driver’s best efforts, the roads became too much of a challenge (the well planned event diversions obviously not targetted at videographers trying to leap frog between locations on the route). If i wasn’t careful time would literally ‘run’ away - I knew I was missing out on potential magic. By the time we’d got to the ‘water station’ location, for example, most of the runners had already gone past. I knew we couldn’t keep going like that.
So I put a Mike B spin on it… and I actually ran part of the route.
I ran pretty much all the way through the old town, down the Old London Road, all the way along to the pier – about a mile and a half - where I was then picked up again and taken to the Statue of Victoria. Not surprisingly, I was absolutely knackered, because I had my rucksack on me the entire time and my drone and my camera equipment.
I was tired from being weighed down, and – let’s be honest – having not trained to run part of a marathon! – but I had a moment where I just thought “well, I’ve got to carry on running, because my driver’s meeting me at the pier.” Nothing motivates you like having no way out! ‘Onwards and upwards’, as my grandmother would have said.
The Client:
Susie, my contact from Nice Work, is possibly one of the most positive people I've met. She always trusted the process. She also always trusted that it would be a great day. She was never stressed and was absolutely over the moon with the feedback and the video.
Really touchingly, she actually got in touch to let me know they’d had feedback on the race through their channels, and people who took part said that I had somehow had a good impact on their race day experience, which was amazing to be sort of credited as someone who wasn't just there with a camera, but was also helping people enjoy the day and that experience – that it wasn’t like I was an imposter and outsider just trying to capture something, I was also part of their day as well. It’s amazing to be reminded that a huge part of my work isn’t just holding a camera, it's also the liaising, chatting, connecting, and getting the best out of people.
And sometimes attaching cameras to them!
Susie and Nice Work actually chose the soundtrack on this project, and I think they nailed it with the great running pace they went for. To be honest, their whole vision and breakdown of requirements was fantastic. They knew exactly what they wanted, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t disappoint.
Feedback:
Susie was an absolute champion and went on to leave the most glowing Google Review testimonial:
“I worked with Mike to produce an event video for the Hastings Half Marathon and the whole team are absolutely thrilled with the result. Mike absolutely smashed the brief, asked lots of questions to ensure he understood exactly what we wanted and went above and beyond in his pre-event research. To say Mike worked hard on the day would be an understatement, and I would hazard a guess that he took almost as many steps as our runners. The result is just brilliant and captures what makes the race special in both the video content and the story the video tells. He's also lovely and great fun to work with. Book him in!”
– Susie Roberts.
At the end of the day:
I had an absolute blast at the Hastings Half Marathon, and I’d love to collaborate with Nice Work and shoot similar events again. I really felt like I’d made a difference with this project, and offered something unique that, hopefully, makes mikebdesigns a worthy name and a good investment.
A huge thank you to Susie and the team, and to all the amazing people I had the privilege of meeting. A big shout-out and my thanks to Howie of 28th Street Media too for the referral - I'm very grateful to him that we offer this kind of mutual support.
So! There you have my story. At the end of the day, I was SHATTERED. But it definitely looks like a team of videographers bought this together, which I’m so proud of (because it really felt like a team effort!). And yeah, I wasn’t kidding, I enjoyed it so much I’ve signed up to next year’s race!
Eeekk! Better start running…
