Hi, Simon here. As an editor here at Oakslade I get to see a lot of lovely, crisp HD footage pass through my edit suite on a daily basis. I always enjoy sitting down and cutting this together according to the client’s brief.

Something strikes me as odd though. People always seem to forget about sound. I’m not sure why, obviously its one of the two key senses we use when watching film and TV. So for me, nothing we do here feels complete without a good soundtrack. I’ve seen many corporate films in the past where its clear that 95% of the client’s focus has been on the image and the soundtrack is an afterthought, usually just dropping any old royalty free soundtrack on the bottom as background music to finish it off.

Sometimes people recognise the need for a voiceover but haven’t budgeted for a professional voiceover artist. In our experience these people are called artists for a reason. As Oakslade has it’s own recording studio clients will sometimes ask us to just grab someone from the office and whilst we understand that ‘cash is king’ this just doesn’t do all of this gorgeous footage justice. No-one in the office sounds like Don LaFontaine so films made in this way, without the proper budget or planning never reach their full potential. Which is a shame because the hard work is always already done.

I think what I’m trying to say here is to always remember that sound is just as important as the image. If you were able to watch Blackhawk Down without the sound effects, I think you might get what I’m on about.

Even better, watch this:

I was looking forward with anticipation to the above named event laid on by the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Would they reveal any secret revelations about the online world… perhaps some tactics for how to market within social networks? At least there might be a speculative debate among experts.

A debate did take place - but virtually everyone there seemed more interested in trying to protect the CIM from becoming obsolete rather than discussing what the future of marketing actually was. Indeed the session revolved almost entirely around a research project which the CIM has commissioned about the definition of marketing. When I asked whether they’d asked any consumers what THEY thought marketing was I was literally laughed at: ‘that’d be like opening Pandora’s box!’ someone said.

This baffled me. Even the speaker’s own presentation slide (amusingly entitled ‘Changes in marketing since 1976′) had ‘Conversation with customers’ among its bullet points.

I think the most valuable marketing work we do with film plays into the notion that people respond to ‘human conversation’ much more than ‘commercial announcement’ (read Seth Godin). Ok, so it’s hard to have a conversation with a screen - but the rise of shared video in online social networks indicates that video is more often than not the conversation-starter.

Companies that want to be part of a conversation with their customers need to have something interesting to say - but they also need to be prepared to listen to the response. The speaker last night concluded that he was pleased that their polemical discussion had sparked a debate. I’m not quite so sure the Chief Executive thought the same - his passing comment to me was (and I swear, verbatim) “Remember lad, I’m the one who’s over sixty and has the words ‘Chief Executive’ in my title”!