The Urban Science Symposium

Last Monday we filmed the inaugural Urban Science Symposium in Bristol, commissioned by Professor Sean Fox and Dr Richard Westaway at the University of Bristol. As a video production team, it’s a great example of why pre-production collaboration adds so much value.

When world-leading academics fly in for a two-day conference, the temptation is often to try and film absolutely everything. Instead, we partnered early with the academic team to build a strategy that squeezed maximum value out of a single, concentrated day of filming, making the content work hard on multiple levels.

The brief was ambitious: showcase the event, celebrate the broader research field, shine a light on the Planetary Urban Sciences Lab (+Lab), give individual speakers the assets they need to amplify the work online, and make sure those assets have a long shelf life for impact way beyond the conference.

To ensure multiple speakers were featured, Sean and Levi John Wolf of Bristol introduced lightning talks: three minutes per academic, one slide, tackling unsolved problems in urban science.

Crucial to this was a rehearsal a few days prior. It meant we could plan camera angles, lights, speaker positions and rapid mic-swaps. If you look closely at our behind-the-scenes photos, you will spot a box made of blue tape on the lecture theatre floor. It caused plenty of amusement among seasoned lecturers who all have their own unique presentation styles, but their willingness to stay inside that box means a smoother and better value post-production process this week as we get the 26 talks through edit and ready for client approval.

As well as the lightning talks we captured informal interviews, observational breakout moments, and drone shots of the delegates. When science communication feels seamless, it is usually because the production team and the academic team spent time listening to each other long before the cameras turned on.

Many thanks to the PLUS LAB team and all the speakers who stayed in the blue box to help us bring their important Urban Science questions to life!