Okay, so we’ve done 70-ish solar shoots over the course of this, and we’ve got a whole lot of experience on how to make sure you get the most from the day and it all goes swimmingly.

I’m going to take you through some of the things that we put in place to ensure that all goes to plan. We’ve only had one shoot where we walked away and weren’t 100% satisfied with the content we got, and a lot of the things I’m going to talk about ensure that doesn’t ever happen again.

First thing is that we actually sign people that are going to be good on camera. We’re unapologetic about this.

There are agencies that will potentially help anyone. Unfortunately, if you’re not enthused by the idea of getting on camera, presenting your business and the hard work that your team do, then we’re not the agency for you. I said it.

It’s unfortunate, but this is a style of advertising. There are many styles of advertising. If you don’t think that you, or someone within your business, is going to get on camera and present it in the right light, and be able to get past the initial awkwardness and difficulty, and get some practice in before the shoot if that may need to happen, then unfortunately try a different advertising route.

There are plenty of other ways you can generate business.

This is for people that really want to stand in front of their work and be super proud of it, like Fraser laughing away.

Next thing is we write a really strong shoot brief for every shoot. That has an agenda literally down to the minute to ensure that when I’m there, I’m making sure we get to each site on time.

It factors in the different driving times between sites so that we can cram in as much as possible. The most we’ve ever done in one day is nine sites.

This shoot brief also gives you an idea of the content we’re looking to capture on the day and makes sure that we hit your key USPs. There’s a lot of feedback that goes into that shoot brief.

Next up is the pre-shoot checklist. This is a growing checklist of things that people have either forgot, didn’t consider, or didn’t realize the importance of before a shoot.

There’s some really simple stuff in there like get a haircut and clean the van, but there’s also other stuff that’s more advanced — things we only really discovered after doing 30 shoots, 40 shoots, 50 shoots, etc. that are really helpful.

Next up, watch some of our top performers. Success leaves clues.

What we’re not saying here is that you should watch them and try and copy the tone, copy what’s said, or copy the comments and benefits they talk about with the kit, because that’s the opposite of what we want and that will hurt your performance.

We want you to show originality, especially with lots of other agencies rolling out video ads. We want to make sure you’re different.

The point of watching top performers is understanding how the person on camera positions themselves, and becoming familiar with the fact they’re talking in a very conversational way. They’re not doing line by line by line. They’re quite often talking as if they’re talking to a friend. You watch the ad and you almost feel like you’re there. That’s the whole idea.

Simple stuff, for example, we had a shoot recently with Tony from TGS Solar and he’d watched some of the other ads. When I was directing, I was like, “How does he know to do that? That’s really good.”

He was talking about the Fox stackable battery and when he walked over to it, he crouched down and put his hand on top of the battery so we could get him and the battery in the same shot.

Normally I have to tell people to do that, but because he’d watched the ads, he realised where he needed to be in order to get the best footage. So there’s some preparation that can be done there.

Next up, we use very experienced videographers. We don’t hold back.

This is not one of them. That’s just me holding Richard’s gear. It’s these three primarily, and we’re also hiring some more videographers, which if you’re interested in, definitely apply somewhere.

So we’ve got Richard, Jay, and Perry here. All of them have got over 10 years’ experience in their fields. They’re absolutely fantastic and they have unbelievably high quality kit as well. We really don’t hold back on that front.

You can definitely tell when ads are shot on iPhones, especially when it comes to B-roll — when someone isn’t actively talking at the camera. Those shots really suffer on an iPhone.

If you’re a premium business or a quality business that’s been around a long time, it will be obvious if your ads are shot on an iPhone and it won’t present you in the way that you want to be presented, unfortunately.

Next up, we’ve got solar Steven Spielberg, according to others. That is a real quote. Someone called me solar Steven Spiel.

At the moment I’m coming to every shoot and directing. I’m not going to say that is always going to be the case because, let’s be realistic, there is a certain point where that becomes unfeasible.

But what we will always ensure is that there is someone there on the day that understands solar and understands what we’re looking to get out of the day from an ads perspective.

We are not just hiring a random wedding videographer and expecting them to come on site and know exactly what we want without direction and things like that.

We’re certainly not expecting you to come on and know exactly what to say, when to say it, what to say next. You will need some guidance and direction.

But yeah, those are basically the main things.

The core one is foundational: signing people that look good on camera.

I’ve turned down quite a few people and we’ve just had a really honest conversation. I’ve said, “Look, are you just doing this because you don’t think you can get results elsewhere? Do you actually want to be on video?”

And they’ve said, “I just don’t think I can get the results I want elsewhere.”

And I’ve said, “Look, there’s other avenues that you should probably try.” You don’t have to get on camera to generate leads, although it’s our preferred approach.

Hopefully very soon we’ll have done 100 video shoots, all solar or the vast majority solar. We’ve got boilers in here somewhere.

We’re getting super experienced in this process and, as I say, out of 70 shoots, only one of them we’ve been moderately dissatisfied with the content that we got.

So we’ve done a lot to prevent that ever happening again.

Hopefully that was useful. If you want a solar shoot and the ads that are run off the back of it to generate hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions of revenue, then click book an appointment, book a call, and we’ll chat and see what we can do.