Esports Insider were looking for a video production company with the capacity to not only film, but take stills at their annual ESI London event. ESI London is the world’s esports & video games industry festival. It’s an event that focuses on conversation and getting business done within the esports and video game industry.

The requirement was to have multiple videographers and a photographer on site all day to capture everything including mainstage talks, networking, activities, food & drinks, and much more. From this, the requirement was to create a 3-minute aftermovie that captured the essence of the event. Showcasing the event as professional, but legitimately fun. Not only this, but the video aims to promote future events and create a sense of ‘FOMO’ (Fear Of Missing Out) for people that missed the event.

On the photography side, the brief was very much the same, getting as much coverage as possible of all the key event features and speakers. ESI also required a selection of stills of the empty event space, and stands and banners for sponsorship opportunities, allowing them to showcase these offerings to future potential sponsors.

The shoot for this event was an exciting one. We took a crew of 4 to BOXPARK Wembley with a van full of kit. We packed a large array of equipment, as flexibility was key to ensuring that we had variety within the post-production stage. This meant all of the cameras! On this shoot in particular, we brought 6 (yes, 6!) cameras! Overkill? Maybe. Necessary? Absolutely!

The plan was to have two cameras on gimbals, one camera for handheld shots, one camera dedicated to interviews/vox pops and finally, two cameras for stills. We had all of the cameras prepped and built on our trolley so that we could quickly swap and change setups at a moment’s notice. This proved to be the best decision once we were on site, as the environment and requirements were constantly changing due to a jam-packed event schedule.

We arrived on set two hours before the doors opened to have an orientation and work out our plan for the day. Following this was the all-important registration shots, capturing the arrival of attendees, collecting their goodie bags and jumping straight into the exhibition. From there we documented each aspect from the networking, to the stage talks, right through to the evening entertainment; which included gaming themed cocktails, a live Q&A with a professional CS:GO player (GeT_RiGhT), and even some 1v1 games with the pro himself!

The on-site interviews took place predominantly at the event media wall. Our client point of contact would find interviewees throughout the day for us to interview, providing us with an array of content to carry the narrative of the video and make it more than just a pretty montage with music! Later in the day, we ran around with the interview camera and microphone to get quick fire interviews with attendees.

The edit for this project was naturally going to be quite the task! With these types of projects there is an abundance of footage which, of course, gives plenty of variety for the editing team. On the other hand it means there’s a lot of work to be done to effectively filter through all of the footage to find the best bits.

Once this is done, it’s onto curating our story and narrative. With this video, we started by outlining a rough plan for the music. ESI wanted a theme of ‘Adventure’ within the music which naturally led us towards some ‘gaming’ themed music, specifically including sounds that felt 8-bit in nature, but with a modern twist of futurebass. Once we found the music tracks for the project, we outlined the interviews and vox pops that we felt were strongest and began to place those throughout the edit.

After the foundations were laid with the music and interviews, it was time for the supporting footage. We took all of the best bits that carry the essence of the event and carefully positioned them throughout the edit. Naturally, this was in the order that made the most sense, starting with registration and ending with the evening activities. We used dynamic transitions and effects to spice up the edit and give it flair.

Once we and ESI were happy with the edit structure, it was time to finalise the edit. So we colour corrected, colour graded and tidied up any transitions, frame positionings, stabilisations and audio effects to ensure that the video was 100% ready to go live!

On the photography side, we had 2000 stills that we needed to filter down. In the end we selected 300 stills that we felt were perfect. We then made any necessary adjustments and tweaked the colours, giving them a vibrant and punchy look.

We couldn’t be happier with this edit. From an internal perspective, Esports is an industry that we’re particularly fond of, so creating any form of content related to Esports is always a blast. We have created a video and stills that successfully captured the essence of ESI London 2024 in a way that is contemporary, engaging and fit for the target audience.