Riding Shotgun with Worthing Water Sports

Not to sound too Monty Python, but now for something completely different...! In a dramatic change from my usual filming and tomfoolery – making serious dance students laugh; treating symbolic dripping taps, chipped mugs and empty chairs as interview subjects, and running along with marathon runners – this time, I was predominantly in the Editor’s seat. And this project was far more ‘Business’ minded than some I’ve taken on.

But Mike, I hear you ask, Didn’t Worthing Water Sports want to see you get onto a surfboard with a camera and a gimble and give themselves a good laugh?

They probably did, Dear Reader, they probably did. But alas... not that day.

The point of this shoot with Worthing Water Sports was to really focus on ROI – that is to say, Return On Investment. Naturally, a lot of businesses will focus on this. It’s kind of the whole point, at the end of the day; companies want videos that boost sales/engagement/exposure in order to expand their presence and, ultimately, sell their services or their products. It all sounds so clinical when we put it like that, but ROI can be anything and everything from the financial returns to, and in my opinion more important long term goal, more personal pay-offs. Let me explain a little bit more about the company, the great guy who runs it, and what this project was all about...

Diving in:

Worthing Water Sports are a Worthing-based company who are expanding - they're growing well, they have quite a following online and they are slowly becoming more and more of a hub of useful information and product reviews. This is something that Sam, the owner, is deliberately pushing forwards with, helping them become that trustworthy place for people to get information – and to spend time on his website, at the end of the day. There are products he wants to sell as well, of course!

Sam is incredibly capable in his own right, and this is why I took on a slightly different role for this collaboration. He has a good understanding of cameras, and he has a very keen eye, due to his background in marketing.

Behind the scenes, I have worked with Worthing Water Sports before on some product shoots we did for a Christmas campaign, and I was approached this time to see if I could edit some YouTube content in an impactful way to support an upcoming product launch. The product was a foil assist, which is a little propeller that goes underneath your foil board or surfboard, and it propels you forward and assists you when you need to get back up to speed or perhaps take yourself back out to sea.

Throughout pre-production meetings with him, it was so helpful because he was very clear about the brief and how he wanted his brand to be envisaged. He even sent over a copy of his brand guidelines, which only stands to make my job easier! We had many transitions, logos, colours and fonts that were to be aligned to these guidelines. Obviously, it's very useful for me to use a company’s specific and personalised guidelines for their brand as a template to be able to reproduce a consistent edit throughout the entire length of the video - or indeed multiple videos. Again, collaborating in this way and not coming onboard to create an original creative vision meant that it was all about preserving and championing Sam’s existing brand, style and ethos. Everything down to the height, size, the way it fades in, or transitioned out were important considerations and things I wanted to honour.

Worthing Water Sports also sent through a product PDF with explanations and details about the product, which I was able to utilize and highlight areas using VFX (virtual effects). This made the movement and the transitions in the final edit between information and the presentation of information a lot more diverse and would hopefully retain an audience’s interest as they were being engaged in a variety of ways.

So... what did I do?

This article is about my involvement on their latest two videos that we edited together. The video was shot by them, and you'll see by the nature of it that it’s done in an Indie way. It has one main camera, which I believe was their phone, and a second camera for close-ups, which was from someone utilising their drone.

One of the challenges that saw me improvising was having to repurpose some of the shots from their previous footage. The drone, for example, although it was hand-held, was not always capturing the detail of what we wanted out of the B-roll. Sometimes that footage was out of focus or indeed too wobbly for me to use in conjunction with the A-roll at that time. So, scanning through and taking B-roll from other areas allowed me to mask these areas of imperfection (sneaky, eh?). We also have moments where, with a fixed lens needing to get physically closer to the featured subject, the drone and operator would appear in the same frame on the main camera. Oops... This was not what we were aiming for! None of us were seeking fame and glory by sneaking in for a little cameo.

And so, alas, from these little faux pas, it meant my library of shots to include decreased dramatically while still needing to include the audio.

For this video, I was very excited because I love the world of water sports. I would love to be more involved in this culture and share the ethos. Ultimately, I think it's quite a humble community. It’s all very salt-of-the-earth, you know? Without needing to be ‘Saltrock’ of the earth.

(Hey, I’m not dissing the sports branding – I practically lived in DCs and Etnies in my teens).

‘Go Hard or Go Home’: Niche Sports and the Community

I find the appeal of action-based sports very exciting, as I am also quite an active person.  It would be amazing and a real personal challenge to work more closely with the action and to capture great footage like this in the future.

However, one of the main snags I come up against with this community is often that it is a very Indie-based ‘grassroots’ movement, akin to skateboarding, rollerblading, rock climbing, etc, and they are prominently dominated by people who create videos but are also taking part in the sport. This means quite often that that they can get that footage themselves and create that content more easily and affordably (they are the ones getting on the surfboards with the cameras!). For the most part, this community is made up of small groups of people or individuals who take themselves off at antisocial times of the day to go and take part in this hobby. So, being a part of that community from an outsider's point of view is quite a commitment if it's also not your hobby. Doing your hobby and filming it sounds fun and makes sense. Developing a hobby in order to film it sounds... time consuming in comparison!

Plus, one major point on this particular hobby is that it is out at sea.... just a small hurdle perhaps. On the other hand, I do have a HUGE lens (stop it) and a drone. But they don't always make it into the backpack on a family day out. They don’t make for quite the picnic my kids are usually hungry for.

‘Get Your Facts Straight’: Product Detail and Avoiding Misrepresentation

One part of product editing and product videography that always poses a challenge are the nuances that you suddenly have to become an expert in. We were reviewing two products in this video, one called the Foil Assist and the other called the Foil Drive, both from competing companies, with different price points, information and user experiences. Not only this, but because the water sports community have quite particular wants and needs from their equipment, different elements were paired with different products in similar but very deliberately varying ways. And as an Editor, you have to keep up to speed with what product they're using in conjunction with another one, so as to not misrepresent information for the review. If you were to misrepresent information, this could be detrimental to the brand as a whole and make their business seem untrustworthy. Something that was absolutely paramount to get right! No Fake News here.

One of the most important things to me is that I make an impact on whoever's watching the videos I’ve worked on – and that goes for brand new viewers and the clients I’m working with. And on this - collaborating with a company on something that could have just stayed in-house - a really satisfying moment was when they were able to watch themselves back for the first time and see the change from what they had recorded and edited themselves, and how I'd driven a new energy and assertiveness into the video.

Through my experience, something else I bring to the table is the way I remove parts of silences and pauses and moments of repetition that may, on a subconscious level, make an audience question the authority or reliability of the information that they've been told. They’re all natural and absolutely fine – they won’t actively damage your cause - but they won’t be doing any leg work for you either. However, for all the ‘personal stamp’ I love to put on things, it should not and does not detract or minimise the subject/client’s personality and character. Their brand should still be their brand, and I exist to come in and champion this – to boost it, to drive it forwards, not to try and change it at its core. This DOES drive the video on and makes the audience so much more attentive – which, for an extremely long video of about half an hour, is so important since you want people to stay enthralled – or to not nod off at the very least!

In the final footage – and a sign I’ve done my job right – you really get a sense of Sam's personality, not to mention his little dachshund, Peggy, who is a frequent visitor in other videos on his channel. Sam is someone who really loves his hobby and his craft and he’s living the dream by going on and making that into a profession. And this became so important to me – it help viewers realise that this was an authentic experience that he was conveying to us. Plus, his relationship with Peggy is super cool. I think she even has her own insta channel... if you're into that. Maybe I spent too much time filming the wrong ‘Star Of The Show’...

BUT more importantly, it was THEM. Authentic and THEM, keeping in line with his branding and ethos.

Takeaway: Why This Matters for Other Business Owners

Working like this – picking up roles and projects where I can take the weight off of busy entrepreneurs and business owners; editing for people who are perhaps overworked or don't have the time or experience or even the professional software – it really highlights to me the potential that you can give a product or a brand. Not to mention demonstrating how much you can elevate someone's potential with the right framing and the right pacing.

One of the things I think I want readers to take away from this is that using a video service such as myself (oh hi) not only takes time pressures off of growing and establishing businesses, but it might also elevate your brand's position in the marketplace to that of a more professional outfit. Plus, of course, it's a very positive experience and you learn to work in a directive and collaborative way instead of losing your evenings huddled in front of a compute,  perhaps doing tasks that you are ill-equipped to do and undertaking work that perhaps isn't your forte or your passion. (If I had a penny for every time a fellow Creative bemoaned the fact that they’ve been forced to become a Content Creator for the sake of managing their own marketing...)

Results: Views, Timing, and the ROI

For this project, the reaction was extremely positive. And as soon as the video was out, within even just a few hours, we had several thousand views. Now this was due to a few factors - one being other marketing commitments of paying for advertising space on social media, but also that the timing of the release was perfect with the product: we managed to turn around both videos within a week or two and had a great amount of timing leading up to the product release, placing this company at the forefront of people's decision making process. 

Within the first day, I had a phone call from Sam saying that they had already sold one of the products, which is just a fantastic example of Return On Investment from a business point of view. If you remember, it’s also exactly what we set out to do.

And remember – ROI can be anything from financial to personal. Sam’s hopes for his Return On Investment were so much more than just wanting to see a product sell – to see the stats sheet clock the numbers of orders, to see the pennies in the bank – and it ties in with Sam’s awesome ethos for the company as well; Sam wanted an ROI that also looked like Trust, Status and Respect. He wanted to see the success of the product in the response from his customers, not just on a spreadsheet. After all, when done properly, an ROI that focuses on building Trust often leads to sales and – some would say more importantly – to repeat custom. And Worthing Water Sports really values the community of people who come to them (again, a ‘community’ can be built through repeat custom and repeat positive experiences, rather than flashes-in-the-pan with a load of one-time purchases and one-hit wonders).

Sam’s ROI and our success put a huge smile on my face, and I was really chuffed for him. Which was the best ‘Return On Investment’ for me too.

Awh.