Events I film
I film conferences, product launches, awards nights, panels and internal all-hands, mostly across the City, Shoreditch, Canary Wharf and venues like ExCeL and Olympia. Every event needs a different setup. The common mistake is booking the same package regardless of what is actually happening on the day.
Conferences, summits and panels
These need two cameras at minimum: one on the speaker, one on a wide shot covering the room and the slides. A second-camera operator earns their fee here; one person cannot cover a stage and a Q&A mic at once. See corporate video from £600 for the filmed-content side of a summit that runs beyond the day itself.
Launches, awards and galas
Atmosphere matters as much as content here: guests arriving, the room, reaction shots during the announcement. I shoot mostly handheld. A locked-off tripod misses the moment somebody actually wins.
Internal all-hands and smaller briefings
A single camera with a good lav mic usually covers these. There is no need for a crew of three when forty people are watching from their desks anyway.
Event videography prices
Event videography starts at £500 for up to three hours, rising to £900–£1,400 for a full day depending on crew size and talk count. A second camera operator is quoted once I know the venue and running order. Full talk recordings are included on full-day bookings. I am not charging extra to record the thing you hired me for.
A same-day edit is £250 on top; multi-day events run at the day rate per extra day. Live streaming is quoted on request, since the kit varies with venue connectivity. If you also want stills, event photography from £350 can run alongside video with the same crew, usually for less than booking two separate photographers. See full pricing across every service for the rest of the list.
| Package | Price |
|---|---|
| Up to 3 hours | £500 |
| Full day (up to 8 hours) | £900–£1,400 |
| Additional camera operator | Quoted on request |
| Same-day edit (60-second cut) | £250 |
| Full talk recordings | Included on full-day bookings |
| Multi-day events | Day rate per additional day |
| Live streaming | Quoted on request |
| Add event photography | From £350 |
Same-day edits
The same-day edit is a sixty-second highlight film, cut and exported before your guests leave. It works because it is played once, at the right moment, during closing remarks or over drinks, not because it is polished. I’ve cut these on a laptop in a green room with a warm G&T going flat next to the keyboard.
Possible: highlights from the morning session, a handful of guest reactions, the big announcement if it happened before 4pm. Not possible: talking-head interviews, drone shots, colour grading. Wait for the full film if that is what you want.
Most photographers I know would rather skip the same-day edit and put the effort into the full film. I think that’s backwards for a corporate event: a rough sixty-second cut shown to a room still in it beats a graded five-minute film landing in an inbox three weeks later. See event films from London venues for examples.
Recording talks properly
The single most wasted spend at a conference is a locked-off camera at the back of the room, recording sound off its own microphone. The audio ends up thin, room echo included, and nobody watches past two minutes.
Sound should come from the desk: a feed from the AV mixer or a lav on the speaker, never a camera mic thirty metres from the stage. I run two cameras as standard, one wide, one that pushes in on the speaker’s face, so there’s a cut to make instead of one static angle. Slides get captured separately and cut into the edit where the speaker references them.
None of this is complicated. It’s mostly a case of asking for a sound feed before the day, rather than discovering on arrival that the AV desk has no spare output. If you need photography of the same session too, conference photography covers that alongside filming.
Live streaming
Live streaming an event properly needs a few basics most organisers skip:
- A wired connection, not venue wifi shared with three hundred phones.
- A 4G bonding backup as a second feed, so a dropped signal doesn’t take the whole stream down.
- Someone watching the chat, so remote questions actually reach the room.
A phone on a tripod is genuinely enough for a single speaker and a small remote audience. It isn’t enough for multiple speakers, a paying audience, or a hybrid Q&A where lag breaks the format.
I’d rather tell a client their event does not need a full streaming rig than sell one they do not need. A stable stream from a phone beats an expensive setup run without a backup plan. See live streaming a London event for how a recent stream ran.
What I need before the day
Before the day, I need a few things from whoever is organising, ideally a week ahead rather than the morning of:
- The running order, even a rough one, since timings change less than you would think once they are written down.
- An AV contact I can reach on the day itself, not only by email beforehand.
- Whether there is a sound desk I can take a feed from, or whether I need to mic speakers myself.
- Which sessions actually matter, since not every panel needs the same level of coverage.
- Confirmation that attendees are happy to appear on camera, especially for internal events touching sensitive material.
Send this a few days ahead and the shoot largely runs itself. See how a shoot day runs for what the day looks like on site.
When you don’t need event video
A one-hour internal briefing that forty people watch live and nobody rewatches does not need a videographer. Record it on a laptop mic, or ask whoever runs the AV desk to hit record on the livestream software already open. Save the budget for the event that actually gets watched back: a launch, an all-hands with news beyond the room, or a talk you want quoted on your website for the next two years.
If you are not sure which category your event falls into, tell me what happens in the room and I will say honestly whether it is worth booking. I would rather lose the job than sell a highlight film nobody opens.
Send me the date, venue and running order and I will reply within one working day with a fixed quote. Tell me which sessions matter most and I will build the crew and camera count around them.