RHS Hampton Court Palace

Throwback to exactly one year ago when I was producing a highlights video of the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival for the RHS. It was so much fun to see the hustle and bustle behind the scenes as well as the finished show gardens and exhibits.

Event shoots are always challenging as you can’t control the light and the sound very well and of course there’s always someone randomly walking into shot. Saying that, it’s lovely to see excited participants, happy visitors and, depending on the type of the event, proud winners.

For the five highlights films I’ve produced at the RHS shows in 2019, I was in charge of two crews – one was responsible to get detail shots of interesting exhibits and show gardens, close ups of flowers and shots of celebs, wheres the second one was a camera crane operated by two people getting lovely birds views footage of show gardens and sweeping shots across the crowds.

When you’re gathering footage with several cameras over the course of a whole day, file management is really important. Making sure that you have got the shots you need and everything is labelled properly, so you don’t end up using the wrong footage in the edit, is particualarly crucial with a tight turnaround time such as an overnight edit.

All five show highlights were edited overnight, ready for when doors opened to the public the next day. This meant meticulous planning in the run up to each event and thinking on your feet on the day. Luckily the weather gods were kind to us that preview day, as even with the best-laid plans the weather is one thing that I can’t control, however much I’d love to be able to 😉