The University of Bristol Law Club (UBLC) are tons of fun to film with. Good bunch of well-to-do kids, dressed in their best and all up to party, each event with its own distinct theme. The themes of the parties always remain a mystery until you walk in the door, so in the set-up time before the guests arrive, you really need to think on your feet to quickly establish an approach that will complement the theme and how to portray the production of the event to convey what it was meant to feel like being there.
There is no party without people and it is that random element that creates the magic. The UBLC love having their picture taken and interacting with the subjects in the right way can often produce some great opportunities. But as a videographer, it would be lazy to simply do photography with a video camera. You always want that lightning in a bottle and to get it you need people acting naturally as if no one is watching, within a three-dimensional space and with a flow of movement that guides the viewer from one point of interest to the next. “Smile hunting” is a sure-fire go-to approach and indeed a magical moment will come and go in the blink of an eye, so I am constantly scanning the room for opportunities and shoot predominantly at 50 frames per second with a shutter speed of 100th of a second to avoid any flicker issues from lighting. In post I can then slow the footage down to half speed which provides a smooth and elegant cinematic feel whilst maintaining natural motion blur. Through this technique, those magic moments can then last twice as long.
The after-parties are pretty wild themselves and have a different feel as we move into the early hours of the morning from formal venue to nightclub, and so I like to take a different approach to that aspect of the night. I seek out characters within the club, be they the disco king at the centre of the dance floor or ‘baby in the corner’ and later in the edit I’ll key-tag footage of these individuals and create micro vignettes giving them their own rockstar spotlight.
To view the full playlist of these events click here