I recently did some filming at home with my cameraman friend Alistair – and the client dialled in from the USA via GoogleMeet. We perched my laptop on a stool so the agency guys could see the action, and hear what was being said. They directed and tweaked the content after each take. In true American style, they started with, “We love it! It’s awesome! We’re blown away by your performance at this end! Can you just try it a different way….” (I am teasing because they were really happy with the result).
At the end, we realised we wanted a few publicity photos of the set-up for social media/self-promotion purposes, but we noticed we had no-one to take the pictures. The husband had gone out, conveniently. So it was time to knock on the door of the neighbour we’d previously asked to turn her music down, to get her to press the button. She obligingly threw on a coat over her dressing gown (hey, we’re all working from home now) and came to do the honours.
So, several bits of teamwork there: some enabled by technology and some by good old knocking-on-doors.
I then cooked a meal for my colleague and we sat up late into the night setting the world to rights, with the husband and another colleague. Thinking about it, I should have invited the neighbour but I’ve got something else planned to thank her. A lovely day was had by all, made even better by the fact that we’re getting paid in dollars so our fee is just going up and up, as the pound falls (hey, someone’s got to make a buck here *inserts laughing emoji*).
My lovely neighbour also helped me out on another occasion when I was trying to record video in 4K on my iPhone (which it WILL do, but not through thre autocue app I was using). We strapped together both our phones, held together with hair elastics on my tripod/ring light, and I recorded the looooooong monologues while she read the paper upstairs. It took a couple of hours in all – and 90% of that was uploading it to WeTransfer without losing the 4K resolution (which is a whole other story). It would have been totally impossible without the 2nd phone, and both my teenager daughters AND the husband were out (I couldn’t wait till the evening as I needed to catch the daylight EVEN THOUGH I was using the ringlight, incidentally).
So, we sometimes need to call on others and ask for help, and absolutely rely on their input to get a job done (at least in my business). So this is me saying THANK YOU to everyone who has swooped in and helped me, especially in the pandemic. The cakes are on me next time we get together.
