It’s rare a project comes your way that you really have a passion about, I was fortunate enough for that to happen to me when we were commissioned to create a cinematic video for a boxing promoter. Boxing is my sport, I’ve always admired the art of pugilism, everything from the modern day all the way back to 1805 when the first World Champion Tom Cribb burst onto the scene.

As the director and producer for this cinematic video, it was important for me to be sure in my vision for the project. I wanted to do a mixture of footage, to contrast the element of gritty realism with contrived elegance – much like boxing itself. The first shoot consisted of staged set ups where we used atmospheric lighting to capture the atmosphere of the location. The second was more of a ‘documentary’ feel….after all I couldn’t fake a real fight!

Before we hit record, I had to select my boxer. Karl Wiggins is an influential athlete based in my home town of Birmingham. We both train in the same gym and we’d talk about the vision while walking on the treadmills. Karl had had his ups and downs in the boxing world. He’d lost and won on various levels, so having someone as humble as Karl who’d follow the film through to completion – win, lose or draw – was imperative to the production. Luckily enough, he won on the night we shot the fight!

Preparing for the shoot is as important as actually shooting it. I planned the shots by storyboarding all the set ups I wanted. I used these to give the crew an indication of what I was trying to achieve. This is always important for any crew, everyone needs to be on exactly the same page before the camera rolls. Turning up to any shoot without a solid plan can very quickly descend into chaos. Everyone needs to know exactly what is going on.

Camera selection for this job was also key to achieving the look I wanted. I wanted a very cinematic approach to it, I wanted it to feel like the footage could be seen on a smartphone all the way up to a cinema screen. Along with the camera choice (which was a 5K camera) I knew I needed slow motion, so we utilised the latest Red Digital Cinema Camera, the Scarlet Weapon.

The shots were fairly simple to achieve. As a crew, we needed to be able to work fast and efficiently. I chose a one light approach for the gym location. The gym itself wasvery dimly lit, and without any way of lighting the entirety of it within budget we had no choice but to angle everything carefully. Having just one light made doing multiple set ups s a lot easier. We were able to quickly knock each shot off with ease and move onto the next. Too many static shots can kill the pace of a video. I believe we are a species of movement, so keeping the camera moving constantly was important.

I wanted the same effect with the actual fight footage – however we didn’t have time or room to setup a dolly and track at the side of the ring. So we decided to use a monopod to achieve that handheld documentary look. The fight footage was more difficult to capture than the gym footage. We had to read the pace of the fight as well as making ensuring the shot was composed correctly, whilst trying to capture that ‘in the moment’ feel.

Upon completion of the shoot, I sent the footage to one of our editors down in London. I had gotten very attached with this project and I didn’t want to spend months on the edit getting it just how I wanted it. Handing off footage to an editor can result in a superior draft than if the person shooting edits the footage.

There is an element of objectivity there which despite their best efforts, someone there on the shoot day can lose. Sometimes knowing just how difficult a shot was to achieve can prevent you from seeing that another one works better in its place.

They also chose the music -something I had previously given a lot of thought to, Sometimes we have to let things go into the control of other creatives for the good of the project. As soon as I watched through the initial edit, I felt the music was perfect to capture the feel of the piece. After a few small tweaks I received the picture locked edit for the colour grading process.

Like the camera choice, the colour grade was important to capture the emotion of the footage. I love the faded and washed out cinematic look, it always reminds me of unglamorous small-hall boxing venues. I wanted to try and replicate this feeling onto the screen.  There is no right or wrong way to grade footage, but there is a difference between colour correction and colour grading. Colour correction is important to ensure the footage looks consistent, but a grade is 100% subjective. I stuck to my guns on this, as I knew exactly how I wanted the footage to look.

After some sound design using audio captured on the evening of the fight we were ready to go.

In summary, everything we do, goes into what we do. Each cinematic video is just as important as the last. Capturing the story and emotion of the content is what we have to plan for otherwise it’s just another video. We want every project to have the same process, all the way from conception, through to storyboarding, onto filming and finally post production. When we get all this right we end up with high quality content.