What I actually do on solar video shoot days

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August 12, 2025

11:22

What I actually do on solar video shoot days

A lot of people are surprisingly unclear on this — especially on discovery calls.

They understand that we shoot video.
They understand that there’s a videographer on site.

But they’re not always sure what my role actually is on shoot days.

And it matters more than people think.

We always bring an experienced videographer whose only job is to capture great footage.
My job is different.

I’m there to make sure what you say:

Resonates with buyers
Reflects what actually differentiates you
And turns into ads that generate leads and sales

That usually means prompting, guiding, and helping you get into a natural flow — not scripting you word-for-word.

This video explains how that works, why understanding solar on the day is critical, and why being good on camera isn’t about being “confident” — it’s about genuinely knowing what you’re talking about.

For context, this video was originally recorded on 5 December 2024, views & strategies may have changed since.

Featuring

Jude Cornish

Chief Commercial Officer

Video transcript

So when I speak to solar businesses on discovery calls, a lot of them are actually a little bit confused on what I actually do — not just in general, but on the shoot days, right?

But it’s actually super important that you’ve got someone with you on the day that understands solar and can kind of prompt you in the right direction.

So when we come to shoot for the first time, we’ll bring a professional videographer with us that’s got 10+ years experience. But we want them to just focus on what they do best: getting the best possible content, positioning you in the right places, and actually filming the footage.

My job is to get you to say what is going to perform — and to say it in a way that is going to resonate, generate leads, and eventually sales.

So what I end up doing is: I come on the day with the shoot brief that we’ll have run through beforehand — which will have some scripted elements — but for the most part it’s topics and key themes and USPs that we want to nail.

I will guide you through those hooks and kind of read lines out to you that you repeat to camera, but for the most part I’ll just try to prompt you so that you can get in a bit of a flow.

When you get in a flow, you’re just going to start speaking about what you speak about every day — and probably have done for years. If you can reach that state where it becomes very conversational, I’ll just throw a question in there and you’ll start speaking back to me, but through the camera.

And that’s how we create these really nice educational, conversational ads that feel like someone scripted a five-minute segment, when in reality we’re just having a chat.

So you can see — here’s me on one of the shoots recently for a bollards company called Wentworth Protection — just directing, speaking with the customer on exactly what’s going to happen with this little customer interview.

I still find it weird saying the term “directing.” I’m not quite sure I’m qualified to be a director, but technically that’s what I’m doing, I suppose.

Quite often I end up basically just running around with the shoot brief half of the day, getting bits and pieces for the videographer, trying to be helpful, trying to be useful.

But I’ve probably done 40, 50, 60, 70 — maybe even as many as kind of 80 of these video shoots now, if you include the ones we did back in the day with an iPhone.

So I’m getting pretty good at knowing when to jump into the conversation, when to stop you, when you need a second to just breathe and catch your breath.

And also — I know quite a lot about the kit, I would say. I’m certainly nowhere near as experienced or technical as any one of our installers, but I’m getting a grasp over the basics.

So when there’s a certain piece of kit that I recognize, or a certain thing that you’ve done or your installation team has done, that I can see is a level above what others are doing in the market — I’ll try and prompt you to talk about that.

And what’s funny is: quite often the installer will hear me say it and they’ll go:

“What? Really? Everyone? You’re telling me not everyone does that? That’s crazy to me.”

But when you’ve been doing it for so long at such a high standard, quite often you actually forget what makes your installations quite so strong — and things that you do that you don’t even think about that other installers skip.

So I’m basically there to guide you through the day and to get the most content possible and the best content possible out of you on the day.

And to be honest, when you have a discovery call with us, I will actually be assessing how good I think you will be on camera.

And if it’s not going to be yourself on camera, maybe it’s a member of your sales team or your marketing team — then I’ll make sure we have a call beforehand so I can get a little assessment for whether it’s going to be a good fit.

Because the only shoot we’ve ever had that wasn’t particularly successful — that I didn’t come away from going “yes, we’ve absolutely smashed that” — was one where the individual that was mainly on camera had only joined the business three weeks earlier.

Which makes it very, very difficult because they didn’t have the understanding we were looking for, and as a result they weren’t as confident delivering the pieces — because they didn’t actually have the fundamental underlying understanding.

So I’ll be assessing that.

If you are able to work with us and onboard with us, know that having seen 70 other people do this, I think you can do it too — and I’m going to coach you through it.

But to be honest, we won’t take on people that I think are going to be bad on camera because it’s so central and core to how we advertise.

If I were to even let you sign on with us, thinking in the back of my head, “Is this guy or gal going to be good on camera?” — then we’d have some real serious problems, and we would have churned far more clients than we have done to date because we would have had far more people that just didn’t or couldn’t deliver on camera when the lens opens up and comes on.

So I thought I’d just give a little breakdown on what I actually do on these shooting days — because obviously for the most part I’m not the person holding the camera.

But I still think it’s super useful.

And we’ve had direct feedback — for example from the likes of Chris Sadler at Kimble Solar — he says, you know, all hats off to him, credit to Chris, he’s fantastic as it is on his own — but he has said that with me there prompting (or someone that understands solar and knows the right prompting), he can think about what he’s saying right now and focus on delivering what he’s currently speaking about.

I can be stood there thinking: “Okay, where does he go next? What can he talk about next? What’s going to flow really well from this? He talked about that, but he hasn’t mentioned this — and how that correlates to the customer and what the benefits are.”

So when he finishes his segment, I can just throw another prompt at him and immediately he’s like:

“Bang. Okay. I’m going. I’m gone.”

And he can flow off that.

So it’s super, super helpful.

And hopefully it calms some of the concerns around whether someone will be able to perform on the shoot day.

Brilliant — hope you enjoyed that one, and I will catch you in the next one.

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