Shooting on location

Choosing the right location for your video can really make a huge difference in ensuring engagement with your audience.

With larger film crews, location shoots can be expensive; nearly all public spaces require some form of license and require a fee administrated by the local authority.

The advantage of using a self shooter with a wireless setup is that these extra costs can be avoided saving you money.

Of course there are many locations that are privately owned and require permission. For a small crew the cost is usually around £500. Examples include the London Eye, The Royal Institution, South Bank Centre, the Tate Gallery.

Another thing to bear in mind when shooting on location are the limitations on lighting and sound. If you are filming a presenter-led video, will there be too much background noise for the talent to be heard? An example is the London Eye with its tannoy announcements and grinding gears - definitely not an ideal place record clean audio. The South Bank is alive with buskers and river boat revellers so also a challenging filming environment.

Whenever filming in a public space , health and safety considerations are paramount, so there can be no trailing wires off cameras into microphones for the general public to trip over. For such shoots I use a wireless mic set such as the Rode Filmmaker.