At a glance
Their own people, filming and editing the same day.
Liverpool City Council's communications team needed to keep up with their own social media, website video, and YouTube channel. Hiring a film crew every time was not sustainable. They needed their own people to be able to plan, film and edit short videos using the smartphones already in their pockets.
We delivered a one-day smartphone video course in Sydney. They walked out filming and editing the same day.
- Client
- Liverpool City Council, NSW
- Team
- Local government, communications
- Delivered
- One-day smartphone video course
- Venue
- Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
The challenge
Even seasoned pros were nervous.
The cohort was mixed: communications officers, comms leads, and two highly experienced media professionals, including a long-time sports writer turned communications officer, Ray Chesterton, who was openly sceptical that a smartphone could do serious video work.
That is the moment a workshop succeeds or fails. Either the trainer respects the experience in the room and meets people where they are, or they patronise the room and lose half of it before lunch.
What we did differently
The venue became part of the lesson.
The day ran at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, an industrial-architecture arts venue that gave the participants something visually rich to film, not a sterile boardroom. Lunch was at the Bellbird Restaurant on site. The venue itself became part of the learning material.
The structure: short demonstrations, immediate hands-on practice, real videos filmed on participants' own phones, edited on the same phones using free apps. Nothing theoretical. Everything practical and immediately useful back at their desks on Monday.
What changed for them
A sustainable in-house video capability.
Communications Lead Lance Northey and the rest of the team left filming and editing with confidence. The council's communication channels gained a sustainable in-house video capability, meaning faster turnaround on time-sensitive content, lower production costs, and more authentic storytelling about local issues.
Ray Chesterton emailed at the end of the day. That email is the line that matters. Not "great workshop", but "I was nervous and you got me there".
“Thank you both for the time and patience you showed in enlightening us all, even the slower functioning among us like me.”
Why this matters for your team
The same format works for you.
If your communications team is paying agencies for short videos that could be produced in-house, or letting moments pass because the production cost does not justify the content, this same workshop format works for you. Government, council, NFP, corporate: the same principles, tailored to what you actually need to film.