2021 for Bullet - variety has been the spice of life!

2021 proved to be a roller coaster of a ride again, but we’re pleased to have enjoyed some moments of normality in between last minute changes to plans and schedules! Luckily we’re nimble enough to change things around for our clients and have access to a support network of talented camera crew and photographers to ensure we always deliver on our projects.

It’s been an honour to work with a great variety of companies over the past 12 months, and here are some of the highlights for Bullet of 2021:

220 Watch Company - Spitfire-inspired watch launch

We loved working on this product launch film for the ‘RJ Mitchell’ watch design, which was inspired by the Spitfire plane. We conjured up images of WWII days and combined stock footage and our filmed content to create the wartime atmosphere, as well as organising a lifestyle photography shoot as part of the promotional material.

Tim Prottey-Jones music video - the Good Life
It was great to work with country music star, Tim Prottey-Jones on his second music video with Bullet, which involved directing two actors to play out the story of the song, which followed the topical subject of negative social media and the impact a few words can have on your state of mind.

Toastie making with Iwan Thomas
Iwan has been a friend of Bullet for many years and we were very happy to produce this promotional video for him for Breville - trying out weird and wonderful filling ideas as sent in by his social media followers. A nice fun project to do!

Solent Devils ice hockey film - it’s Game Time!
We’re big fans of Ice Hockey and when Gosport’s Solent Devils asked us to help build excitement for their first game of the season, we couldn’t resist! Amateur sports missed out massively during the Covid restrictions so we created a short social media trailer for the club to use to reach out to their fans and build a buzz about the game.

Saints Foundation 20 year anniversary films
2021 was a big year for Saints Foundation and we created series of content for their celebration campaign, telling stories behind all the fantastic work they have done in the community over the last 20 years, and the difference they have made to individual’s lives. One of the biggest bonuses of working with the charity is that you get to meet so many inspirational people - and here is a film that highlights some of the stories we’ve told along the way.

Southampton-based bare-knuckle boxer, Slav, got our creativity juices going, with a a brief to create a promotional video for his upcoming fight in Russia. We took inspiration from his fascinating wolf tattoo and scripted and directed a short film, with a Russian VoiceOver.

Southampton’s Asia Mela Festival
A captivating and colourful event to film was Southampton’s Asian Mela Festival, which had to be celebrated virtually. We filmed various pop up performances around the city to create a three-hour long film, which was then broadcast ‘live’ via Art Asia’s website. There were some vibrant still shots taken from the event too.

Southampton FC Training Camps

Southampton Football Club run holiday clubs and coaching sessions for youngsters who simply love playing football. They get to train with first class coaches, improve their football skills and have the opportunity to be spotted by scouts as future soccer stars too - so we spent a week filming what they got up to!

Aaron Page Classic
We were honoured to be able to film the Aaron Page Classic event, which celebrated the life of the legendary weightlifter who tragically lost his life to Covid a year ago. It was an emotionally charged event, organised by Southampton’s Barbell Division and we were pleased to be able to capture the essence of the day in this film.

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Dunlop - racket launches for 2022
It’s been great to be able to get out and travel again this year, filming lots of content for Dunlop. A trip to their Italian and French tennis academies meant we could create a series of leading players stories and capture launch content for the new SX rackets, which will be released soon.

Youla
Not released yet but this was a lovely project to work on. Youla is a homecare service that helps the elderly stay at their own home for longer. We wrote the script, sourced the location and directed the shoot - so look out for this video coming soon!

Garmin - Tom Evans film
It’s been great creating more content for Garmin in some fantastic locations. One of the recent ones features features trail runner, Tom Evans. The film is not yet released but there was also a still photography shoot as part of the project and here’s a little sneak preview of the what to expect…

And now for 2022…

We’re looking forward to lots of new and exciting shoots for 2022. There’s some lovely projects lined up with Dunlop, Swim England, Garmin and Fatface, which will be announced soon…so watch this space!

In the meantime, the team at Bullet would like to wish you all the best for 2022 and hope it’s a safe, happy and healthy one for you all!

Saints Foundation - an emotional journey

The Saints Foundation is one of those clients who just make everything so worthwhile. Showcasing their projects is incredibly rewarding and being part of their journey has been an inspiration over the years.

We’ve loved meeting individuals who have had their lives improved by the work of the charity, and teasing out their stories. Not only are we honoured to have met the individuals, it makes us very proud to work with a client who is such a big part of the local community, associated with the local Football Club and making a difference to local people’s lives.

We’ve held a fantastic long-term relationship with the organisation, and were pleased to hear Head of Saints Foundation, Greg Baker describe Bullet as an ‘integral part of our team’, as we’ve really come to understand their needs when it comes to creating content. When working with (extra)ordinary members of the public, vulnerable people or even footballers who aren’t used to interviews, we work hard to make it a comfortable environment so nothing is scripted, yet the main points come across in the narration, asking the right questions to stimulate the best response. Trust is a big part of this, which is massively important to us as a business.

Emotion has played an integral part in the stories we’ve told - and here’s a little showreel to sum up just what the Foundation means to the community and the individuals involved.

““We have been working with Matt and the team at Bullet for four years now, and during that time not only have they created some brilliant and innovative pieces of video content for us, but they have also been an absolute pleasure to work with. They have taken the time and effort to get to know all parts of our business inside out, and have quickly become an integral part of our team.

I can’t speak highly enough of their passion, professionalism, adaptability and the quality of their work, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone looking to work with a video production agency – you definitely won’t be disappointed.”
”

— Greg Baker - Head of Saints Foundation & Community Partnerships

Collaborations are the way forward

We are always up for collaborating with other film agencies, and over the last couple of years we’ve formed a strong bond with our friends at Creative Capture Media. There have been various projects for which they’ve asked us to help film and edit, on behalf of their clients. And when we’ve needed a bigger team or additional resources for shoots, they’ve always been our ‘go to’ partner.

Whilst Creative Capture Media are a similar film production company to Bullet, we have a great, non-competitive relationship, which allows us to support and trust each other to be an extension of one another’s team when required.

We value relationships like this exceptionally highly. As a small production company, we need to know we can rely on external teams to quickly jump into action and deliver the same quality of filming and editing that meets our high standards for our clients.

With Creative Capture, we know we get this every time and are very grateful for their support. A couple of the recent projects we’ve collaborated on (shooting and editing for Creative Capture) include a commercial for Lucozade we helped shoot and edit and a Tough Mudder film we edited, shown here.

Lucozade film for Our Parks

Tough Mudder film

longevity, continuity and trust.

Long term relationships are incredibly important to us at Bullet and we are delighted to have worked closely with Southampton Football Club for the past four years. We started our journey with them on just a single small internal video and our film work has now spanned many departments within the club, to delivery of more than 30 individual projects. These include working with the Club sponsors, the media team and the players, as well as marketing the match day experience to customers.

Continuity is key and as relationships develop across an organisation, trust and understanding between both parties grow. This ensures we are in tune with the client’s expectations and needs, and the client knows they can trust us to get on with the job. Efficiency on a shoot is also key - and in the case of Southampton FC, our rapport with the client - and players - ensures we can make best use of the time available.

As the business evolves, we evolve. With a long-standing client, we will always look for ways to meet their needs, adding to our skillset when required. Bullet’s business capabilities have massively grown over the past four years - which is largely in part to adapting to the changing demands of Southampton FC - for example, the way video is used in social media, adapting to content restraints through Lockdown, widening our technical skills, and being able to turn projects around quickly. Being located just a stone’s throw away from the St Mary’s Stadium has meant we’ve been nimble enough to shoot footage at short notice and always available to pop along to discuss ideas. It’s fantastic to see the Premiership club supporting a local Southampton business too - and long may our relationship prosper!

As we’ve taken this moment to look back and reflect on this relationship, we thought we’d share some our best bits in this round up film:

Bullet Saints Showreel 2021

2020 for Bullet - a year like no other

2020, where do we begin! We’ve all had our fair share of Covid-related challenges, yet we’re pleased to reflect on the past 12 months with a great deal of positivity.

We’ve been working hard to service our existing clients, like Miele, Dunlop and Southampton FC, adapting and continuing to produce video content, despite the restrictions that have got in the way of more traditional filming.

And we’ve had some great new clients join us, including Garmin, working with their frontman Ant Middleton on campaigns which are just starting to be released now. Variety has been the name of the game, with some great additions to our portfolio of sports films - an area we’re really passionate about. And there’s some exciting news to bring you next year as we formally launch our still photography side of the business - watch this space!

As we reflect on the year, and remember life before Covid, here’s a rundown of how the year panned out and some of the projects that we’ve worked on in 2020…

2020 kicked off with a full series launch for The Relationship Paradigm , which we had filmed at the end of 2019 to launch founder, Neil Wilkie’s, relationship counselling book. This had a more of a short film style vibe, as a series of episodes, scripted from different chapters of the book.

The Comeback Campaign for Southampton boxer Ryan ‘the Piranha’ Garner, as he entered the ring after 14 months was a great success - and we’re pleased to say he went on to win his comeback fight!

Our work with the Saints Foundation continued, as they concluded their Saints Together Campaign, which was shown at the celebration dinner earlier on in the year to showcase all the brilliant work the charity do in the community.

Southampton Football Club involved us in a variety of projects, including the launch of their new Corporate Hospitality packages with a Masterchef-style ‘Dell’s Kitchen’ show.

We’ve also really enjoyed creating content for the Club’s sponsors, Kingfisher Ale, Wow Hydrate and Monster. We got the opportunity to work with both the Men’s and Women’s first team players too, which was great!

Making this cool FX racket commercial for Dunlop was a massive highlight, which included the full works of our skillset including visual effects and sound design.

Then, after buzzing from such an exciting start to the year, Covid hit! A lot of planned filming had to be paused and as the whole world reeled, we worked with our clients to figure out how we all could adapt and still provide great online content.

Saints Foundation and Dunlop were quick to release 'lockdown films’. The charity kept active in the community, particularly for the more vulnerable and elderly members and produced exercise videos and ways to interact from their homes.

Dunlop rounded up its top athletes to produce home videos and and challenges, which we put together for social media content to encourage people to stay active.

The performing arts world has been particularly hard hit during lockdown, however the fab team at the Lighthouse Poole stepped up and created workshops with their Black Cherry Company actors to encourage families to get creative at home. We filmed content for them to release each week over the summer.

Washing machine installations were still allowed, so we continued to capture films for Miele and our friends at WashCo, abiding by government guidelines during our shoot.

We were able to create a product launch for the new 220 watch, filmed in our own studio without any human contact required!

And we managed to squeeze in a couple of music videos too for Naipia and Tim Protty-Jones! Both filmed as performance-based music videos so very Covid-safe.

When the kit sponsor suddenly changed for Southampton FC, we turned around a super quick, light-hearted announcement video.

And, as restrictions began to ease, we created a fun film to show the relationship between Dunlop and Srixon with a series of head to head challenges between golf and tennis pros. A great watch if you have a few minutes spare!

Garmin is a very exciting new client for us, and we were able to safely shoot their brand frontman, Ant Middleton, at his home in Essex to promote the fēnix 6X – Pro Solar Edition watch. Lots more content to be released next year so one to look out for!

More new clients included Planet Education, who needed a video as an alternative to a live presentation in order to promote their school sports service.

And My Health and Good Eat Club, who both offer healthy lifestyle plans wanted punchy, online content to relaunch their services. Again, all done supplementing filming with stock footage and text content to stay compliant with government guidelines.

As we approach the end of the year, we’re finishing up with some virtual school films and partnering with our good friends at Creative Capture to work with on an exciting project for Lucozade and our parks. Lots more to be released next year and we’d like to thank all our clients for their incredible support this year.

2020, we’ve almost conquered you - if we can achieve that, 2021 should be easy, right?!

Oh and Ben has a new dog called Max, who is super cute and is the subject of a lot of our filming practice!

Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year!

2019 for Bullet - what a way to enter a new decade!

Well, what can we say - the year certainly started and ended with a bang! Here’s an overview of some of the highlights from 2019, which has been a fantastic year for Bullet. We’ve worked with some truly amazing clients, expanded our team and had some exciting opportunities to film. Some of the work is yet to be released, but here are a few of the bits we can show you!

Firstly, we welcomed in 2019 by filming a NYE party to rival all parties! Local businessman hosted his family and friends with an awesome event, featuring fire-eaters, snake-charmers and incredible dancers. Eye-popping stuff that was incredible to film.

Next, we saw the release of the mini documentary series that we’d put together as part of the eToro Top Transfers sponsorship campaign for Southampton FC. This campaign focused on some of the most defining moments for the club’s history and we loved combining archive footage with interviews for a series of films featuring Saints football legends Kevin Keegan, Marians Pahars, Rickie Lambert, Kelvin Davis and Lawrie McMenemy.

On the subject of Southampton FC sponsors, we filmed the Utilita Trilogy Games - a friendly head to head between Hampshire Cricket players and Southampton FC to promote the energy company, who sponsors both teams. Three footballers vs three cricketers in three rounds of quick games testing their skills from each sporting discipline, hosted by Matt Le Tissier and Kevin James. What a great afternoon that was!

Our corporate filmmaking kept us busy throughout the year too, with a series of films for local companies, including T&T Facades, featuring their impressive development in Southampton city centre and Newbury Chiropractors, who did a series of films to promote their specialist practice. Both these examples included a full campaign of testimonial case study films (great for reinforcing the brand messages), company culture films (great for encouraging the best people to work with you) and about us films (perfect to for use on the website to introduce the company), as well as teasers and trailers for social media. A series of lifestyle films for Jackloc is coming soon too, as well as a variety of company films for Trimline, so look out for these over the next few months.

Our short film, No Response was released and received a great reaction on the short film circuit. We’re now working on another short film Damned, which is due to be released in spring 2020. Watch this space!

In complete contrast, we worked with local designer, Libby Pearse, to produce a series of social media films and still photography images to launch her new range of beautiful scarves, filmed in the atmospheric New Forest.

Working with the Saints Foundation, we were pleased to be asked to film the Saints Together campaign for the third year in a row. The people we meet on these shoots are truly inspirational and it’s always a humbling experience to work with the Foundation and the incredible work they do for the community. Chris' film shown here, was a great example of the series we produced.

Conferences and events coverage - this is one of the services we offer, but as most are private company events, we can’t always share the contents. We had the honour of filming a 3 day festival-style conference at Google’s impressive offices, which was a fantastic experience, which we can’t show you, but still get excited about!

Summer 2019 saw the beginning of the new football season and the announcement of brand new sponsors for Southampton FC. We produced the announcement film for LD Sports - the new main club sponsor, as well as some of the partner activation films, including Sure, Virgin Media, Kingfisher Ale and the new hospitality packages.

Keeping along the sporting theme, we’re so excited to be working with Dunlop on a series of stories about athletes at the top of their game, as well as a series of racket launches. So far we’ve travelled to Nice, Hull and Madrid to film tennis, squash and padel, both filming and photography. There are lots more to be filmed and released in 2020 - keep an eye out for these!

Our continued work with professional footballers and personal trainer, Alex Parsons, led us to follow Southampton striker, Danny Ings and Liverpool midfielder, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain during their pre-season training sessions. As well as creating content about their rigorous training regime, we used the opportunity to make short ambassador films for the brands that sponsor them, e.g. Supreme Nutrition.

Whilst we’re in the process of name-dropping (!), we were also pleased to create a short film for Virgin Media, as part of their Southampton FC sponsorship campaign, which involved Southampton star, Craig David interviewing Ryan Bertrand, Ché Adams and Angus Gunn and having a kickabout at their training ground.

Bringing us back to reality, we have continued to enjoy a great working relationship with Miele, and have been working on a number of installation films for the commercial laundry side of the business. Here’s an example of one - Kitty’s Laundry, where we travelled up to Liverpool to capture the installation from start to finish.

Talking of installations, we also hooked up with our old friend, Iwan Thomas earlier in the year, and filmed Morse Security, who were installing a full home security system in the athlete’s Hampshire home. A great company to work with and always a pleasure working with Iwan, who is such a natural in front of the camera.

Finally, it’s been a crazy end to the year with a heart-warming series of Christmas videos for Saints Foundation, which saw a number of professional footballers spreading some festive cheer with surprise visits to fans.

We’ve got plenty more to look forward to as we begin 2020 and a brand new decade. One to look out for is a video series we’re creating for The Relationship Paradigm - a framework that is being launched to help individuals with their relationships. Here’s one of the trailers that has been released, but the next few months promise to bring exciting times for this particular client…

2020 - Bring it on!!

Installing a new product? Here's our top tips for creating an installation film.

We work with a number of installation firms, who install essential items that businesses require (commercial laundries, fire alarms etc). We regularly hear from them that the most successful marketing communication they have had with their customers is when they have demonstrated their skills with a case study - using real customers to describe the service they have received. Even though the products being installed are not the most exciting subjects, attributes like attention to detail, expertise and workmanship are usually very important to the end customer - and a video is a great way to explain all of this. As we often say, no-one sells your business better than a happy customer, and not only does a positive testimonial give you great credibility, it also gives you great content for your marketing campaigns!

One example of this is SLS, who landed a prestigious installation of a Miele laundry at the Savoy Hotel, London. Luckily, they were used to creating video content and immediately saw this as an opportunity to raise their profile within the commercial laundry industry. We followed the installation from start to finish and interviewed the hotel team who were delighted with the service. The videos went on to be used in email marketing campaigns to several other major hotel chains and their business saw significant growth on the back of this. With astute marketing campaigns and excellent workmanship, they are now one of the major installers and dealers for Miele in the South.

Savoy Installation - 15-second teaser

Savoy Installation - 30 second trailer

Savoy Installation by SLS - 1.38m

If you’re considering creating an installation video, our top three tips would be:

1. Use the customer to describe the process in their own words - don’t be afraid to put them in front of the camera and keep it unscripted (we can always edit out flustered um’s and er’s). Their words can be far more powerful than a professional voiceover.

2. Don’t hide behind challenges - they are a great story for showcasing how you overcame difficulties and demonstrated your experience and expertise.

3. Get the video company involved from the very start - from taking out the old installation, to putting in the new; seeing the trucks arrive, coping with awkward entrances etc is all great footage for keeping it real and letting a potential customer know what they might expect.

Our final top tip, which goes without saying… always use Bullet to create the installation video for you! :-)

2018 for Bullet - it's been loaded with activity!

What a year it’s been for Bullet, growing faster than ever before, expanding the team and looking forward to lots of exciting plans for 2019!  As it’s the time of year for traditional ‘round robins’, we thought we’d highlight a few things we’ve been up to over the past 12 months and the variety of work we’ve enjoyed. A massive thank you to all our wonderful clients and partners and we look forward to working with you all over the next 12 months too! 

First up, at the beginning of the year, was David Philpott's music video we created for his charity single to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer UK. What an emotional shoot that was and a great cause to be part of. 

We then followed the incredible work that Saints Foundation do in the community and filmed their relationship with the Big Issue, which went on to scoop a Gold award at the Sports Business Awards. Needless to say, we were very proud to be part of that journey! We also filmed a variety of other campaigns for the Foundation, including their ‘Saints Together Week’, ‘Soccer Schools’ and the ‘Big Sleep Out 2018’, designed to raise awareness of homelessness in the city. 

As one of our major clients, Southampton Football Club has continued to be a pleasure to work with. Particular highlights for us this year include the partnership work with sponsor Sure, the Corporate Hospitality promotion and, of course, the recent recreation of the iconic goal with Rickie Lambert as part of the SportPesa Kits for Africa campaign. 

We were thrilled to be asked to work on a mini documentary with Southampton FC for etoro, talking about the best transfers over the years, and we got to interview some Saints legends!

Whilst on the subject of football, we were delighted to work with AFC Totton to help launch the ‘Football Family’, with a video telling the story of two individuals who have been helped massively by the organisation, which supports football players who don’t quite make the cut into the professional world. What an insight into these youngsters and the opportunities that the Football Family can give them. 

For something a bit different, we enabled a new musical project to achieve their dream by harnessing the power of video! From an initial film to launch a crowd-funding campaign, they secured enough funds to put on a trial show in London. We then produced multiple social media videos during rehearsals to raise the profile of the project in the run up to the one-off July performance. The event was a sell-out, and, on the back of this performance, we’re pleased to hear that ‘The 43 Club’ is now securing a slot in a major London theatre. What a great success story and lovely to be able to have been there from the very start! 

Now onto washing machines and Miele, one of our long-term clients, have kept us busy behind the scenes, touring round all the dealers in the country to make individual testimonial videos for each. We were honoured to join the company on a trip to Germany at the beginning of the year, as one of their partners, to ensure we were all working off the same page and very much part of the ‘Miele team’. We’ve also enjoyed working with local Miele dealer, SLS, on a number of projects, and have seen them grow from strength to strength over the last few years. 

Other interesting jobs we’ve worked on include the corporate culture film for Highfield Professional Solutions, promoting the fact that it is such a great place to work (and having seen it first hand, we believe it is too!).

And then, possibly the most fun we’ve had this year is filming for JaJa - a new mobile credit card company that wanted to show some ‘extreme user testing’ of how easy it was to access the credit. We filmed real-life people using the app in extreme situations, which included being shot at by paintballs, speeding down the River Thames and free falling in a sky diving simulator! 

Not forgetting of course, our celebrity friend, Iwan Thomas, who asked us to create a different take on his ‘baby reveal’ video. His exciting arrival is coming early next year so we send him lots of best wishes for fatherhood. 

As for next year at the Bullet studio, we’re having a bit of a refit, including new carpets throughout (but Rusty the dog is not allowed to christen them!) and we are very excited about a new member of the filming and editing team, who will be joining us in January!

We have a bunch of varied projects lined up to reveal in the new year - watch this space for more from Saints and Miele and some interesting launch films for a new dating website. We have some lovely promos for a chiropractor, children’s entertainer and a bridal studio and some great social media content for a new personal trainer launch. We also have the release of a new short film we’ve been working on. 

For now, it’s on to the big responsibility of filming the Christmas production for Matt's children’s school - featuring reindeer, baby Jesus and of course a few carrots and broccolis thrown in for good measure! This won’t be for public release sadly (and unlikely to feature on our big budget show reel!) but a great memory for parents to keep and a good deed done for the school...Santa, we hope you’re reading this! 

On behalf of the team at Bullet we wish you a very merry Christmas and a prosperous 2019.