Educational video production by London based videographer

Working as a freelance videographer my work encompasses educational video production. Part of my ambition and ethos is to work on projects that both reflect and promote our diverse community.

Case study debate – What does a queer museum look like

For the second year running, I filmed at the ‘Queer and Now’ festival held at Tate Britain in London. People of all ages and identities attended a packed day of performances and events featuring artists rooted in the queer community. One of the events was a debate entitled ‘What does a queer museum look like’. I was keen to film this debate as it’s a conversation that continues from a previous film that I filmed and edited. With the assistance of Damien Arness-Dalton, I produced a film called ‘London needs a Queer Museum’ from the ‘Queer and Now’ festival 2017.

Filming at Tate Britain

To ensure I would be able to film at the 2018 festival, I contacted the event organiser and curator E-J Scott. E-J arranged for me to get an onsite health and safety briefing ahead of the filming. The debate was taking place within Tate Britain’s 1840s gallery. Once I arrived at the gallery, I learned that the guests would be sitting on cushions spread over the gallery floor. The public audience would be seated around them. To film this event on my own, I set up one camera on a high tripod with a wide shot encompassing the width of the gallery. My second camera was fixed to a monopod so that I could move around quickly and easily. This would allow me to film as many speakers as possible with the equipment I had.

Recording the debate sound

Ahead of the filming day I had contacted the Tate Britain AV team to request a clean feed of their audio desk output. On the day all I had to do was connect my Tascam digital audio recorder to their audio desk output via an XLR connector. The Tate AV team were in charge of managing the sound levels from two roving radio microphones. I recorded guide sound on both cameras so that I could easily sync up the shots with the good sound in the edit.

Filming the debate

Once the debate started, I had to quickly find the best position available with the second camera and frame for each different speaker. Over the course of the debate, the audience grew in size and on occasion ended up standing in front of the tripod-mounted based camera. Working on my own there was not a lot I could do about that so had to just go with the flow on this occasion.

Editing the video

Before the event, I had thought about editing a short highlights video from the footage. As I repeatedly watched the filmed media in the edit, I gained a sense of how informative the whole debate was. I realised at this point the debate could be great educational video production. Once I had edited down a highlight video, I also edited a 1-minute promotional video to share on social media. For the edit of the whole debate, I edited in the best second camera shots to the wide shots and uploaded the 70-minute version.

Making video accessible and editing on pronouns

To help make this educational video production accessible, I edited readable subtitles to both the trailer and 9-minute highlights edit. I also asked each guest contributor what pronouns they preferred to use. I then edited these pronouns next to their name titles as required.

Promoting and explaining queerness through video

All the links have been uploaded to my Vimeo channel so that they can be shared and embedded as required.

A transcript of the 9-minute highlights video is available here.

The 1-minute promo of the event can be viewed and embedded from this link.

The 9-minute highlights video of the event can be viewed and embedded from this link.

The full-length version of the debate can be viewed and embedded from this link.