Geek Retreat: Franchisee story, Dudley

Geek Retreat came to us for a franchise recruitment film, and they picked the Dudley store for a reason. Neither of the owners had much background in gaming or tabletop games before they opened. They'd worked closely with Geek Retreat to try something new in the area, and what they did really well was listen to people and build a community around the store. That was the story head office wanted would-be franchisees to see.

There wasn't time to get everyone on a pre-production call, but we've been doing this long enough to know what it takes to make people feel comfortable, and to do that part on the fly when we have to. We arrived in a quiet part of the day to meet the owners and get to know the store before any cameras came out. We did the interviews early, while it was calm, and spent the rest of the day as part of the furniture. When the regulars came in for their games we chatted to them, asked what they were playing and asked if we could film. You can see it in the footage: people playing their games and enjoying themselves.

We cut a three-minute film for the website and turned round a 4:5 version for Facebook and Instagram the next day. Head office also got the full interview, so they could pull their own clips. It went straight into their recruitment ads.

Good content doesn't always need a big plan or a scene built from scratch. Sometimes it's as simple as a client saying this is us, this is our culture, what do you think, and our job is to step into that and get it on screen.