International Day of Charity

People care an incredible amount for charities, especially with ones they can connect with, and rightly so. They care about the help they can provide to people and the environment, ranging from helping the homeless to helping animals. At Inspired, taking part in charitable events is staple to our company profile. We want to give back to the community and hope to make a good impact.

We’ve worked alongside many charities, all for humanitarian causes. UHNM Charity, based in Royal Stoke Hospital, raises money for University Hospitals of North Midlands. The money raised goes towards projects that government funding doesn’t stretch to. We’ve seen so many successful projects that it shows the charity really does something amazing for the hospitals patients and staff. An example is the surgical robot, surgeons can perform difficult surgery using a robot which replicates their movement, but with the advantage of having minimised recovery time and keyhole surgery.

Another charity we have worked with is Find a Better Way. Founded by Sir Bobby Charlton, whilst visiting a minefield in Cambodia, Sir Bobby saw first-hand the humanitarian damage which landmines cause in war torn areas both past and present. He felt that there had to be a safer way to negate the mines without putting the lives of those that lived nearby at risk, using modern technology to do so.

Once upon a smile is a charity that aims to support people emotionally and financially. The founders saw that there were many charities that support families where a member has a terminal illness, but nothing for after the death, which is a very difficult time for families. It makes such a difference seeing bereaving families smile after spending time with the charity, that you can see a visible difference.

There are so many more charities in the local area that deserve every bit of recognition, but then this blog would go on for a long time. Without charities, there would be very little help in the world, and aid is something that people need, especially those without resources. We want to thank every charity in the world for all the amazing work they have done to make it a better place.

We also want to thank all the volunteers taking part in charitable events, without them, the charities would not be able to run. They have given up their own time to give back to society and make a difference to someone’s life as well as the charity.

The Snoop Dogg Blog

Snoop likes his Stokey Oatcakes!

Can you believe it? Famous rapper, actor and DJ, Snoop Dogg, or should we call him Snoop Lion, is coming to town tomorrow!

The notorious rapper is visiting Keele University’s SU bar and will be DJing tomorrow, Friday 31^st July. With tickets selling at £20 per person, the event will probably have already sold out, meaning that hundreds of people will be having an immense time in his presence. We came up with a few ideas for the hip hop mogul himself to kick back and relax while he’s here.

After researching his hobbies, we found that he’s a huge fan of chicken wings, with Nando’s still being in the works, we found an alternative. So after a night of djing, he could visit Chico’s Peri Peri Grill or Momo’s Peri Peri Restaurant. Not only are they great value for money, but the food tastes good too, bonus!

Being a fan of art and creating his own masterpieces, the rapper could learn about the culture of the city by visiting the Potteries museum and art gallery. You never know, he could take up pottery just from the influence of the ceramic city!

The eminent rapper adores football game and is a huge supporter of professional football teams; well this city has two professional football teams, Stoke City FC and Port Vale FC. Unfortunately football season is out; however he knows which games to attend next time he’s in the area.

Snoop Dogg has his own swimming pool in his Californian mansion, and rightly so. The American weather allows outdoors swimming activities, Stoke on Trent isn’t that lucky but, we do have a Water World. Having an indoor tropical aqua park is much more fun and enjoyable than a single pool with their own water roller coasters! If he feels like cooling down, he knows where to head.

With plenty of ideas for the rapper to enjoy what the area has to offer, he’ll see how good Stoke is and maybe come back in future!

An evening at the Staffordshire Chambers Business Awards

On Thursday evening, we were invited to attend the Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce first ever Business Awards, and of course, we said yes.

Our very own Adam Georgiou was a finalist for Employee of the Year, which is quite an incredible feat! There were over 300 applicants for the various categories, all of which are amazing local businesses that have achieved great things since they began.

So we attended as part of Adam’s party, proud colleagues as we are to have a finalist in our team and to support him.

The Chambers hosted a spectacular event. Putting it together in four months is no easy task but they managed it and went beyond expectations.  The Staffordshire County Showground was beautiful, complimented by the finely dressed guests of the evening.

Many great businesses had attended, eager to see if they or their employees had won. As the evening developed we were served a four course meal which was absolutely stellar and the catering team were tuned like a well-oiled machine.

Adam’s category was one of the last awards to be handed out.  Our table was full of suspense when the time came, unfortunately, he didn’t win. The award went to Paul Crutchley of the Staffordshire Fore and Rescue. We congratulate Paul on his award and hope he had a great night.

Although Adam didn’t win, he went away with a finalist certificate and had an amazing evening anyway, as did we all. He’s still one of the best production members we know and will continue to be. We’re already looking forward to next year’s awards, an event not to be missed!

I Support My Dad

This week we have the premier of our latest mining related documentary “I Support My Dad”. For those who haven’t heard us talk about it, the documentary focuses on the children and the wives of the miners who went on strike in 1984/5. The strike was one of the most memorable and difficult disputes in British history. Thousands of miners across the country came out in protest against the scheme of pit closures and job losses.

The miners’ strike marked the beginning of the end for the British coal industry. It was the final attempt by mining unions to prevent the foreseeable poverty caused by the lack of jobs, affecting thousands of people; this was one of the most confrontational strikes marred by the clashes between the police and the miners.

For a child growing up in this environment, it was a very confusing time, their parents had switched roles as the dads would stay at home and look after the children, and their mums would go out to work. These were hard times, but families grew stronger and closer together. Children went from rarely seeing their dads, to spending a lot more time with them, which was a happy moment for them, they knew what their parents were going through but knew the situation was necessary in order to get a better life and to stand up for what they believe in.

Children were proud of their dads for not backing down; knowing the circumstances and how important it was to their dads, it gave them a great role model and a basis for their morals and ethics in life.

The commitment towards the cause was unwavering, even after it ended, the children were proud to be a miner’s son or daughter.

Click here to watch the documentary.

Katie enjoys being behind the camera!

In the last few months, Inspired have hired Katie and I, which of course is great news for us, Inspired and the UK as a whole.

Being creative is about generating ideas so having women in the creative industry is a great thing, we give different strategies and ideas, making it a more diverse and innovative environment in which to create. However in the creative sector, which focusses on tv, video, radio and photography, women only make up 37.1%, a pretty low number.

I’ve been wondering why there aren’t that many women in the industry and how it could change. After a lot of research, I’ve found that the lack of exposure of female film makers and female role models in the media sector may play a huge part in the industry. If you ask anyone to name a director or producer, the majority of the time it’s a man they mention, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay (destroyer of films), and Spike Lee to name a few.During this research, I found interviews with female directors where they were subjected to abuse from their peers and not taken seriously, which has been resonating through the tv and film industry for a long time.

A lack of female film-makers also seems to have made it difficult for ­studios to imagine women in charge. There are signs that this culture is changing. A 2009 report – carried out by the UK networking organisation Women in Film and Television (WFTV) and Skillset – found that, while a number of older participants reported direct experience of overt sexism, none of the younger participants did.

A female film maker that does come to mind is Elizabeth Banks, starring in many features, most recently the Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect 2, which she also directed. Banks would be in the number one spot for my top five female directors, the exposure she had for Pitch Perfect was immense so I immediately knew females everywhere would also know who she is.

Looking at who the top females’ directors are, the names that are mentioned most are Katheryn Bigelow who won the Best Director Award for the Hurtlocker. There is also Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Mira Nair and Sofia Coppola who are in the top five lists. I recommend you watch some of their films.

 

Hopefully one day Katie and I join that kind of list and inspire the women of the future.

The world of conferences

I have spent the last two days at the RetroFit Live conference at the fabulous Centre of Refurbishment Excellence so I thought it would be good to base my latest blog on the world of events. Since starting at Inspired last month, we have already filmed nine live events. We have been in Manchester, Birmingham, Stoke, London and Burton. Event filming is a big part of our work at Inspired and I must say I am enjoying going to these conferences immensely. The range of topics has been mind-blowing, export, mental health, legal training, waste management, the list goes on. I have found it fascinating to learn so much, about so many things, so quickly. Did you know moisture in houses is a big problem in the UK? I certainly didn’t until recently.

Thinking about it, we all go to a lot of events, gigs, football matches, festivals and even family gatherings. The yearning for interaction, belonging and shared experience is part of the human condition but I never thought it applied to the corporate world. It’s like a secret world I knew nothing about; hundreds of these events are taking place every day all around us, in hotels, conference facilities, theatres even at football clubs. Hundreds of thousands of events with millions of delegates each year globally. Why are these events so popular?

Getting people together to share best practice, discuss new ideas and meet industry experts face to face is something that the digital world can just not replace. We are social animals and physically meeting and talking with each other is always preferable to interacting via phone, email, or any of the vast arrays of online methods.

We are singing the praises of one to one contact but we make films so where does video come in? Why do organisations pay us to capture their events on film? Having your event filmed means:

• You can share it with people who weren’t there.
• People who were there can revisit it.
• You give the event an extended lifetime.
• You can attract people to future events.

There are a lot of other reasons to capture your event but filming can also mean live streaming worldwide via the internet. We all have the ability to be broadcasters these days and we can help with that too.

I’m excited about how much I’m going to learn here as there’s something new every day. I love going to all these events you even get feed at most of them so I can expand my waistline as well as my knowledge.

IF you are organising and event and want to discuss how video can be used to make it even more successful please get in touch.

You can e-mail us at: info@inspiredfilmandvideo.co.uk or give us a ring on 01782 845533.

Click here to view our vine on the CoRE Retrofit Live event.

Celebrating Record Store Day

I had never heard of Record Store Day until a friend had told me about it. I thought it was really interesting and unique, and thought as part of Inspired being a social company it would be a great opportunity for me to get to know our local record store.

Record Store Day is here for us to appreciate the wonderful pastime of flicking through albums and searching for bargains, finding something new or something old and forgotten that triggers a certain memory. It’s an opportunity for us to reminisce and share things of the past present and future, as well as appreciating that everything is not yet digital, as vinyl is coming back into fashion.

Record Store Day began in 2007 when hundreds of independent stores in the USA came together to celebrate their unique culture. The UK followed suit and 2015 will see the eighth celebration of the UK’s unique music sector.

This is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists across the globe make special appearances and performances.

Festivities include performances, meet & greets with artists, DJ’s, in store quizzes and many other events. So, on Saturday 18^th April, why not go to your local record shop and join in, have a browse and be one of the millions of people banding together to make this sector thrive. Be part of a community that loves its music and helps the independent stores against it much larger rivals. So head down to Music Mania and rifle through those cd’s and vinyl’s, I’m sure Mike, Dan and Ryan will have a blast from the past with the vinyl’s…

Click here to watch my interview with Music Mania, I hope you enjoy and have a great Record Store Day!

Are you socially mobile?

I had my first mobile phone when I was 11, it was a hand me down from my older sister but I was still grateful for it. Although all my friends had the latest gadgets that they got for Christmas or birthdays, I had a pretty pre-historic brick, which didn’t have any games on it, much to my dismay. It was a very basic phone, only calls and text, I mean, what’s the point of a phone if you can only make phone calls on it?

Things have changed a lot in the 10 years that have passed since. Everyone has a phone now, more specifically: a smartphone. So what makes these blighters so smart?

It seems people don’t talk to each other anymore, were all glued to our screens checking Facebook and Twitter. We don’t even interact with our friends when we are out, or even when we’re at parties. Some complain that constantly taking photographs is a bad thing too; you’re not living in the moment and enjoying the experience. Is this phenomenon really anti-social media?

We don’t think so. Given how much content we produce for use on social media it would be hypocritical to say so. Like it or not mobile media is like air – an unavoidable/essential part of the atmosphere in which we live.

We are constantly on the move in the last two weeks week we had shoots in Scotland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Salford Quays, St George’s Park, Manchester Conference Centre, Stafford, 2 hospitals, a sewage works and Port Vale FC. You can imagine what its like when we’re busy! We love being able to stay in touch and share what we are up to. We are a social company.

We have a basic human need to connect and communicate with others. Now we aren’t restricted to who we know and talk to, we can create a rapport with people online, based on our hobbies, interests, cultures and ideologies.

We even work socially, our relationships with our clients are no longer restricted to office hours, we get to know them much better and see the bigger picture of what they are about. Being personal changes our customers into our friends, not a company, and everybody prefers a friend to a company.

As content producers, we’re always aiming to expand and show the world new and creative ways of reflecting their brand, recent apps like Vine, Meerkat and Periscope are on the rise for us, the social world is immediate and ever changing and the type of content we produce needs to reflect this. Our only hope is that if people are missing out on real-life by looking at content we have made that at the very least they are finding it interesting!

Exporting: Why you should make your business go further

This has been my first week at Inspired and all the talk has been about exporting. I’ve trained in production since college, so when I first heard about exporting, I thought it was about export a project from Adobe or Final Cut Pro. But it’s not that kind of exporting. Exporting is selling your product or service from outside of the country you are based. You may already know about it, you may already practise it, so you’ll know much more than I do, but I’m writing this for the people who don’t have a clue what I’m on about.

As a company who exports our services, we had three colleagues in Copenhagen meeting a client and another three filming the UK Trade and Investment export summit, as well as another in Glasgow (Scotland is kind of international!). So it’s been quite a busy week for us.

We at Inspired create videos for companies, we started by doing it locally, regionally and then nationally, but what was stopping us going further and being an international company? Ourselves. Naturally people make their own boundaries, how far should they go? How much should they do? What will it cost? You need to get over that fear, once you’ve pushed past the boundaries you’ve made for yourself, nothing can stop you, the world is your oyster!

So we began our international venture, and we’ve been to a lot of places: Oman, Singapore, Macedonia, Denmark, Sweden, France, Croatia, America, Belgium and the Czech Republic.

Exporting is an increasingly large portion of our business. It has helped us in so many ways, not only has it increased our turnover, but we have more staff, prestige and wider horizons. We also understand the importance of exporting for the British economy in general.

It surprised me that to Inspired, there is no difference working in Copenhagen than in London. To get to and stay in Copenhagen is similar if not cheaper than London, but the post shoot drinks can be pretty expensive!

The focus of the UKTI summit was helping medium sized businesses to expand. Exporting is a great way to expand your market. We interviewed Gü founder James Averdiek who told us of how his pudding venture became a successful international brand, after being stocked in the largest UK retailers like Sainsburys, Morrisons and Waitrose he decided to export across the world. Who knew that this exotic sounding product was born in England! Cleverly, the name suggests it could be from anywhere, it is more commonly thought to originate from Belgium or Sweden. Having a very tasty product helped as well.

We at Inspired love our international clients and are huge advocates for export. We’re so proud to be working with UKTI and being chosen to be one of their case studies was fantastic recognition for us. This week has been an eye-opener for me. Who thought Stoke-on-Trent was gateway to the world. Better dig out my passport!

For more information you can have a look at www.wmchambers.co.uk where you can find James and Ad doing a spot of filming. You can also have a look at the video of the case study: https://vimeo.com/116063716