Our latest work with Cube For Men

Published on April 20, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

We have just uploaded some new videos for Cube For Men in York. These have been shot and edited together most recently by Paul Banks and the Digifish team.

There are two clips below that are now being used online by the salon, and each one takes the person that is watching through essential hairdressing techniques and skills.

The aim for this collection of films was to offer a useful guide (from some of the best in the business) and as a point of interest for new and established clients of Cube, as well as to build a sense of trust and offer a form of brand extension to the company itself.

We wanted to show Cube For Men as a dynamic and forward-thinking salon that is able to cater for a variety of different age groups, styles and conditions. Hopefully you will agree that we have achieved our goals with these videos.

The first clip portrays stylist and company director Paul showing the audience how to apply artificial hair – the video takes the form of a step-by-step guide so that it’s easy to digest and take in from start-to-finish.

Watch our first Cube For Men video guide here

The second video we are going to show you sees Gemma taking the audience through the process of how to cope with the classic bedhead look (it’s certainly helped me!)

You can check out our second video guide by clicking here

Obviously the tone for these videos is particularly relaxed, but we really feel that the choice of music, alongside the use of black and white (and colour) close-up and mid-shots helped to convey important themes of trust and personality along with the underlying fact that this group really knows how to work with its customers, no matter what their needs may be.

We hope that you enjoyed those snippets (pun intended), and that you will pay Cube a visit next time you need a trim!  Don’t forget that you can now find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

For more information on our work, please visit our official website.

Kind regards and keep in touch,

Dom and the Digifish team

Feeding The Fish (What we’ve got coming up…)

Published on April 14, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Digifish is going to be very busy over the coming months. We’ve got some very exciting projects coming up that are going to involve both current and new clients.

Most recently, on Monday of this week (April 12) our Creative Director Paul Banks was in London filming for SJM Concerts producing another advert for a tour by the cult Mancunian indie-rock band James – we’ll give you more news on that as it develops!

In other news, we’re currently editing six new films for Cube For Men in York – these expand on the “perfect shave” concept we worked on the first time around. We have a strong relationship with this company and it’s great to be able to provide them with a positive way to represent themselves on video, on the web and to clients. It has certainly been our goal throughout the creative process to boost their reputation and corporate profile. If you want to see the first video we did for Cube For Men, just click this link.

In other news, we are going to start filming for the National Apprenticeship Service this month and into May. The event is about spotlighting talent in the Yorkshire region and it will be held in the region’s cultural hotspot of Leeds.

Our brief for this is to create some short films in advance of this event. The shorts will see talented young cooks in the region have an opportunity to have their menu served at the National Apprenticeship event. It’s a great chance for budding chefs in the area (and for us!) The film is going to be shot in a Masterchef-style and the competitors will be judged on the quality of their dishes following a competition – these films will be shown at the event before the winning dish is served.

We’ve also been asked to film the whole event as a documentary and turn it into a DVD which will run for around one hour and 30 minutes. We’re going to have three cameras covering the stage as well as one camera backstage so that people who are interested won’t miss the good stuff.

While this project strays slightly from our new corporate direction, we wanted to take the contract because we realise how important it is to “shine a light” on new media-based talent in the Yorkshire region and give them a helping hand as much as possible to let them know that opportunities are out there for them to take advantage of. It’s all about taking chances and working hard – we think that will be communicated perfectly in the final production.

And…following the success of the ‘Albany Max Roadshow’ DVD – which you can watch on the Digifish site. We have now been invited back to work with Albany on a healthy schools initiative.  Filming has already begun at the University of East London and we’ve documented the launch event – work will continue on this contract throughout the year.

Finally (for now) we have a project lined-up for June which will see us working with Children in Need on a youth project. For this we will be documenting the teaching of young people about environmental issues and climate change – the aim for us (and the teachers involved) is to get across the importance of these issues and how they can impact our world.

We’ll keep you posted on these projects as they develop further.

For more information visit our official website and Twitter.

Kind regards and keep in touch!

Dom and the Digifish team.

SJM Concerts – An Introduction

Published on April 12, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Recently we have been working with the UK’s leading ticket agency and tour promoter SJM Concerts/gigsandtours.com to produce a video that will whet the appetites of fans before the comeback tour of iconic pop band Squeeze which will take place in November of this year.

Digifish's camera operator Chris filming a special Squeeze performance

In the above shot you can see our Camera Operator Chris and Creative Director Paul setting up for a very special (and exclusive) live performance from Squeeze for the advert.

Digifish and Squeeze 2

For the above shot you can actually see (through our lens) Squeeze performing their songs for the  us – how cool is that?

These adverts are currently used online on a number of websites, at the point of sale and are also being used within e-mail marketing campaigns.

The whole product saw one of our quickest turn-arounds to-date and we completed everything in three days. We travelled down south to film one day, edited at home in York the next and had the final thing completed and ready following that…phew! It was certainly hard work but very worth it.

Watch our Squeeze tour promotional video for SJM Concerts/gigsandtours.com.

We’ve done a couple of ads for SJM now and we always look forward to travelling and meeting new artists (which often happens – as you’ll read we rarely stop!) and we have a few more great opportunities coming up to work with them in the very near future, so keep your eyes peeled. If you click this link, you can see the work we did for SMJ promoting a Shed Seven tour from last year.

Throughout these videos, you can see the concept and style we were going for. We wanted something fairly informal but totally upbeat in both cases so that fans could get a little more “up close and personal” with the band – we were going for a raw “backstage” vibe with an aim to create a short and concise documentary featuring some talking and background information along with live performance so that fans who go to the shows can feel like they know the group a little better. We’ve always been inspired by the music of Squeeze and Shed Seven respectively, so to be able to work on projects for SJM involving both bands is fantastic and we are really glad to be involved with them.

Don’t forget that you can now find us on Twitter so be sure to keep in touch and let us know what you think about our work!

Kind regards,

Dom and the Digifish team.

S-T-R-E-T-C-H and the Pop-Up Museum – An Introduction

Published on April 8, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

We have a very strong working relationship with the York-based project S-T-R-E-T-C-H who have recently launched an intriguing initiative in Leeds called the Pop-Up Museum (click here for more information and photos of the launch).

This innovative not-for-profit organisation is determined to widen participation within museums and galleries all over the country. The Pop-Up Museum was created to bring selected content from Leeds’ museum out and in to the local community as they shop and walk around the city so that people could see the kinds of artifacts and information they’re literally passing by.

Shooting is now complete and we are in the process of editing everything together for the final product. For this, S-T-R-E-T-C-H have been working in partnership with Leeds Museum Service. The group has opened a space in the Merrion shopping centre in Leeds – the aim is to bring the museum and its objects to a whole new audience. Our brief was to document the work throughout the first three months of this year, including interviews with professionals, funding bodies, artists and the general public. We feel this project has been one of our most successful and enjoyable to-date. The result should mean some excellent exposure for our brand as the final DVD that we put out will be used to pitch the concept on a national level.

For a little background, we first started working with S-T-R-E-T-C-H in February of this year and formed a strong working relationship with them. The project has been delivering informal education projects to marginalised groups for over four years now, they have been working in prisons, hostels and out in the community. We are very proud to be associated with this passionate and creative group and we’ll be supporting a lot more in the future.

You can see a still from our interview with the director of S-T-R-E-T-C-H, Carlotta Goulden-Allum below:

S-T-R-E-T-C-H

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and keep in touch!

Kind regards,

Dom and the Digifish team.

JMI Amplification – An Introduction

Published on April 7, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

It was our great honour to be asked to work with this world-renowned company recently. We were commissioned to produce a promotional film right from the “shop floor” that would showcase the diversity and drive behind JMI – the premier brand in British instrument amplification since the 1960s.

Digifish hard at work for JMI

We are very pleased with how the final production is developing – filming took place last month and we are currently deep in the editing process. It’s all going well and there will be some more news coming soon about a series of amp and effects demonstration films that will be used by the company as a marketing tool at point of sale (as a DVD) and online. There will be around seven films created over the coming months.

Please visit the link above for more information on the company and their fine selection of custom-made guitar FX pedals and amps. For now though, here’s a few more stills to keep you entertained.

The pedal of Yorkshire guitarist Mick Ronson

Don’t forget to keep in touch and Tweet us!

Kind regards,

Dom and the Digifish team.

Digifish’s community projects and evolution

Published on April 2, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Over the last year, Digifish has been working on heavily promoting its corporate profile, and we’ve been working with high-end clients like Homebase, JCT600 and Business Link Yorkshire (we’ve done over 70 profile films for them!), and nationally acclaimed guitar amp manufacturer HiWatt. Despite our expansion, we appreciate the value of our community work because we have helped to boost exposure for valuable organisations in York and the community since 2002.

In this post we’re going to pick some of our favourite videos from our important work with York’s homeless charity Arc Light and also, one of the music videos we produced for local band Morpheus Rising. Why? So readers can see how Digifish began and has developed over the years until now. While our focus has evolved, we certainly still value this work because we know that it means the world to our clients and each product was very enjoyable to make from our point of view as well.

‘I Am You‘ takes a sharp look at homelessness in York. The aim with this film (and our work with Arc Light in general) is to challenge people’s perceptions of homelessness, highlight the strength of the problem in York and create something that is both informative and attention-grabbing.

‘I Am You’ – A personal look at homelessness in York

‘Life On The Street‘ is another affecting video we created for Arc Light. This one sees the group’s members get together to produce a music video themselves with our support, we think you will agree that it’s entertaining and top-quality. This video readily shows not only skill of the homeless community that we had the pleasure of working with, but also their great passion and drive. We were often inspired by working with them on this.

Check out ‘Life On The Street’

It’s certainly been a pleasure to do work within the community in York – the people that we’ve teamed up with have so many interesting stories to show and tell, of course that’s not only the case with the community material we’ve produced but also the corporate and documentary films that we’ve been working on more recently. You can see a great example of this kind of work below.

Experience the perfect shave

For the above video, we had the opportunity to work with Cube For Men of York to create a short promotional video for them showcasing “the perfect shave”. We had a lot of fun doing that and there are plans to work with them again in the near future.

Another great example of our new direction is the video we worked on for Albany Facilities. Our role when working with this washroom service company down in London was to help them promote their roadshows around schools where their character Max would teach young children to wash their hands and stop the spread of germs. You can watch the accessible short film below.

Max teaches children to wash their hands on behalf of Albany Facilities

On a final note, we’ll leave you with another music video we produced for a nationally-acclaimed York-based rock band called Morpheus Rising and their video for ‘Fighting Man’. We took on this project because the group’s great ideas and goals to support our nation’s armed forces were (and are still) most admirable. The video was created in aid of Help For Heroes and the Poppy Appeal.

Morpheus Rising video

We’ve accomplished so much over the last few years and we are constantly evolving and growing. It’s an exciting time for our business and we’ll be keeping you up-to-date right here because we have some great documentary and corporate promotional video projects in the pipeline for the very near future!

Thanks,

Dom and the Digifish team.

You can now find us on Twitter. Come on and follow the fish! Also, check out our official website and YouTube for more information.

Business Link Yorkshire – An Introduction

Published on April 1, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

We’ve now collected around 70 videos for Business Link Yorkshire since we started working with them last year.

Business Link

We have covered some fantastic stories based around entrepreneurs in the Yorkshire region over the last few months. From the 70 that we have collected, it’s impossible to pick a solid favourite so, we will link to a selection that we know will cater for our vast and curious audience.

With the below video, we wanted to capture the essence of what Business Link is about and help to remove any pre-conceptions that may be there for those thinking about starting up, that it may be really difficult to get in touch with the right people for support. Of course, this couldn’t be further away from the truth. As you will see by clicking the links, everyone involved is so keen and supportive when it comes to helping out new talent and people starting out in business (alongside people who have been in business for a while). As a group, we know how challenging starting out can be, but how positive the results are when you succeed – we really wanted to get involved with Business Link in the Yorkshire area because we identify with their core values and ideas about nurturing local business and industry. 

Watch our coverage of Venturefest in 2009 

In a more recent video we speak to Viv and Chris from Exquisite Handmade Cakes in Leeds about their business. This was particularly great to capture on film because this business has every chance to grow and develop further and we are sure that they will be a very positive example for start-up companies throughout the region.

See our Exquisite Handmade Cakes profile

Next up we have a video about how a business (led by the determined Paul Wilson) focused around animals is able to work with schools and residential care homes in the Yorkshire area through an innovative idea which sees clients of Paul’s being able take a “hands-on” approach with a variety of species including birds, ferrets and rabbits. We’ve particularly enjoyed working with this business over the last few months and we are very supportive of his Town and Country Rangers business. The video offers great advice to any variety of new businesses about e-mail marketing, researching and more.

Watch our profile of Town and Country Rangers

For up-and-coming web-based marketing businesses Pure Net is a great example to follow, on the next video we see Managing Director Paul Gibson talk us through his e-marketing business and the 24/7 lifestyle that comes with running such an operation. This video highlights just how important it can be to build a solid team of people around you when you are starting out, and also how drive and determination can help you to not only succeed at a local level, but on a national one as well.

Watch our profile on Pure Net 

Our last spotlight for this digiblog is one that most can relate to – the desire to turn a hobby into a money-making business. Jim Poyner started out as a photographer just taking pictures for friends weddings and then he expanded from there to become a professional snapper with his own business and a host of clients with different needs. Jim talks us through key things like strategy when setting up in business and things that apply for his career-path like face-to-face meetings, picking a location, saving for equipment, investing and more.

Watch our spotlight on Jim Poyner Photography  

We had a fantastic time filming the videos we have selected for you and as stated, it’s a pleasure to be able to work with Business Link – we will continue to profile their exciting entrepreneurs for the rest of the year as part of our strong partnership. Our aim with these videos is to get as much exposure for Business Link Yorkshire as possible and similarly, to offer short and simple guides by the people starting in business for people doing exactly the same thing. We want people to get as much out of these videos as possible and, if you are thinking of becoming a start-up then take the advice of these people, because it will help you out more than you realise in the near future.

How can Business Link help you?

To see all of our videos you can go and check out the official Business Link YouTube.

Don’t forget you can now Tweet us at Digifish HQ, as well as check our body of work out on YouTube and via our official website.

Keep in touch!

Kindest regards,

Dom and the Digifish team.

Ezystone Installation DVD – An Introduction

Published on April 1, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Digifish shot a kitchen installation demonstration video on behalf of Ezystone throughout last month. The finished product has now been distributed to Howden’s Kitchens. The film features one of our voiceover artists who’s credits include the BBC and ITV.

Obviously this production was another exciting challenge and a great piece to add to our corporate portfolio. Our main aim was to achieve a final result that painted a clean, professional and innovative profile for Ezystone. We managed to do this by utilising a variety of camera angles, light-hearted music and a powerful voice to inspire confidence within a quality brand. We’re very pleased with the result and we think that whether you are interested in kitchen installations or not, you will be able to see that Ezystone are a company that you can trust and rely on.

A clip will be up soon on our YouTube!

Don’t forget to Tweet us and keep in touch!

Kind regards,

Dom and the Digifish team.

HSFA – An Introduction

Published on March 2, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Editing is now underway for a fantastic project that we began filming in January. The Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association is a registered charity based in Leeds originally established in 1996 to promote learning about the Holocaust, using evidence provided by the personal living testimony of survivors, and aims to encourage respect and tolerance between all members of society. The Association has a regular team of dedicated survivors and supporters who speak in schools, universities, and other organisations including prisons. The people that we met during the creative process had some really amazing stories, and unfortunately some are no longer with us. As a result, it’s been incredibly important for us to not only achieve the best result for the organisation, but also to preserve the memories of these interesting and unique survivors.

HSFA still

Our brief for this project was to produce a series of short thematic films for use on the HSFA website which is currently under development and will be ready for this summer. Exciting times are ahead for Digifish and the HSFA!

The series of short films profiling the experiences of Holocaust survivors throughout the Yorkshire region are intended for use in history classes at schools all over the country covering themes such as the importance of faith, the long-term impact of the Holocaust and the importance of standing up to injustice.

Don’t forget that you can now Tweet us!

Kind regards,

Dom and the Digifish team.

Trustmarque – An Introduction

Published on March 1, 2010 in Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

We recently undertook a corporate brief for an internal training and development  film for a York-based IT consultants company. We scripted the film and then used a professional voiceover artist, two cameras and an autocue system for the final recording to achieve maximum effect.

Trustmarquee's head office in York

It was a very interesting project and a challenge that we were more than willing to undertake. Trustmarque are a great company to work with and so we wanted to put across their core values of quality and experience so that staff and new recruits could really get a sense of the drive that fuels the brand and keeps it going. At the same time, because of the brief’s nature and the information that we needed to push (which was very time-sensitive as the company were going through a number of changes during the period of filming) it was essential for us to keep focused and maintain a very formal structure.

You can view a sample clip of the film (which has now been distributed to the group as a DVD) by clicking on this link.

Picture 126

From watching the short extract you can at least see that our goals are totally evident. Maintaining a personable element for this film is key, as you can see the viewer is pulled straight in and made to feel like they are part of the company because they are being told about key issues – it’s like they are sitting in an office for an important meeting. We wanted to beat back the pre-conception that in-house films have to be totally impersonal, and while the formal structure is core, we wanted to try something a little different for Trustmarque.

Don’t forget to visit us on Twitter for more information.

Kind regards,

Dom and the Digifish team.