Ever wondered how we create Community Updates?
Having started out being shot on Phone (1) just over a year ago, the Community Updates have grown in quality and provide more opportunities for Nothing team members to present news to the community in video format. They’ve also become one of the community team’s favourite projects to work on!
Two and a half months before each update goes live, we work closely with our PR team to choose the best stories from the quarter, and develop the script with them. If we know of any top-secret news or announcements that can feature in the update, we’ll plan to include these in advance too.
Once the script is locked, usually about 3 weeks before the go-live date, it’s time to get filming! We book a camera crew, our locations, and an editor. So far, we’ve only ever shot in Nothing-owned spaces, which simplifies location scouting and keeps the visuals on brand.
In the latest Quarterly Update video, you may have noticed there were three separate backgrounds. We ended up doing three shoots on two separate days, owing to the speakers’ availability. Our first shoot day took place in the Nothing Store Soho, a visual delight with tons of interesting backgrounds to film with. Our talented crew shot great new b-roll, which our editor time lapsed and used to transition between speakers during the video.
This shoot day’s call time was 7:30am, so whilst the crew were setting up, I grabbed us all a coffee before Akis - the second to last speaker in the video, but the first to be filmed - arrived, and broke the news about Phone (2a). I filmed the intro and outro next. After a lunch break, we set up to film with Jillian and introduce her as our new VP of Marketing.
Our second shoot day happened just over a week later. In this time, we’d got a good cut of the first shoot day’s footage. The only speakers left to shoot were Tim, Joseph and Rohit. As our Community Board Observer, we can’t film Rohit’s section until he’s finished with the Board meeting and has had time to write up his notes. He spoke in the meeting in the morning, and a couple of hours later, had his part filmed.
This makes the final few days of the editing process quite hectic. Since the Community Update always goes live the week after the Board meeting, we only had 3 edit days between the last shoot and the go-live date - but we got it done!
It’s only been a week since our last Quarterly Community Update video, but we’re already working on the next one. If you have any suggestions for future quarterly update, let us know below!
