How do docu-reality films work for marketing and recruitment in professional industries?
“Communication throughout the projects is comprehensive and timely (and jargon-free!), resulting in clarity of everyone’s roles to deliver to the deadline. Their professional engagement with us as partners and our project stakeholders whilst on shoot is great and ensures everyone involved has an enjoyable and relaxed experience of being filmed, which is not everyone’s cup of tea, admittedly!”
In a mediascape that increasingly values authenticity in communication; the audience's desire to peer into people’s actual lives, rather than viewing a polished representation, means there is real commercial utility in the documentary-reality film. Especially when marketing to, or recruiting within, professional industries.
The brief, and our audience’s needs
Surrey Careers Hub approached us in late 2024 to produce a short docu-reality film about people in careers accessible to those with special educational needs. The film featured four individuals at Woodhatch Place, Surrey CC HQ. It was screened to an audience of school-leavers with additional needs, showcasing the range of skills they could develop in these careers. The film’s objective was to inform and inspire, whilst remaining tonally and technically accessible to this audience.
This meant the piece had to have a slow edit pace, and could never convey more than one visual or spoken statement at a time, which posed a creative challenge. The editing tools we normally use to cram information into a short space of time would be unavailable. Furthermore, there needed to be clear scene transitions between each character, and time built in for the audience to reflect. With this in mind, we set out to create a serene, cinematic film that employed beauty shots, warm lighting and film stock emulation to set the tone.
Two Sunny (January) Days at Woodhatch
Production at Woodhatch Place ran for two days in January 2025. On day one, we interviewed our four key characters: Wayne the groundskeeper, Rylee the Facilities Assistant, Eduardo the Cleaning Manager, and Daniel the Bakery Owner. They shared their educational background and sense of fulfilment in their current roles, as well as reflecting on how accessible they felt their careers were. On day two, we filmed fly-on-the wall coverage of each of our characters going about their daily routines. Our cameras travelled around the kitchens, offices, the council chamber and luscious grounds of Woodhatch; capturing charming interactions and unique insights into the working lives of our characters. This documentary coverage was blended with establishing shots of the buildings and grounds, to create the distinct structure and delineation of scenes within the film.
Post Production: What to do with all that footage…
Typically in documentary style filmmaking the precise narrative is crafted in the edit, hence it can take two days to capture the footage required for an eight-minute film. Once we had cut the final piece, Surrey Careers Hub were extremely pleased with the creative choices we had made to inform and inspire their chosen audience.
Georgina Angele, Strategic Careers Hub Lead said:
Partnering with Tim and Callum at Lamplight is always a pleasure! Their commitment to understanding and researching the intent of the brief is always excellent. Communication throughout the projects is comprehensive and timely (and jargon-free!), resulting in clarity of everyone’s roles to deliver to the deadline. Their professional engagement with us as partners and our project stakeholders whilst on shoot is great and ensures everyone involved has an enjoyable and relaxed experience of being filmed, which is not everyone’s cup of tea, admittedly! They consistently deliver to the Careers Hub project briefs, and we are super happy with the quality of the outcomes. Would highly recommend working with Lamplight on your film, creative media, and photography projects!
We thank Surrey Careers Hub for reaching out to us to produce this film, and look forward to future collaborations with the team.
