Cake Solutions doesn’t really do what it says on the tin (as in baking!), but what they do do is particularly specialised and involves a number of people that really know what they’re talking about when it comes to software development, applications and cloud infrastructure… this was all very new to us here at Standby when we went to the first meeting. We were in luck though as Guy (Remond) and Peter (Evison) helped to explain what the business was all about in an easy to understand a clear manner. From there it was then down to STANDBY to create a concept that helped to explain their offerings, but maintain their fun and ‘open to the public’ knowledge and way of working.

It became very apparent that Guy and Peter were nice guys and that helped to create a concept that involved them talking straight to camera. With tutorials being a large part of what Cake can offer, we really liked the idea of having a number of Cake staff talking direct to camera, explaining what it is they offer rather than answering questions or doing anything overly scripted, so that they would be connecting with the viewer directly rather than the ‘standard’ off camera casual feel (similar to a tutorial style).

>STANDBY TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS: The shoot went really well, filming at a studio in Marple near Stockport (https://217.199.187.69/stagesrv001.co.uk/ardenstudios.co.uk/) and all the staff performed excellently even if they were slightly out of their comfort zone (our director, Simon Owen, does the job of calming and helping people through this, in order to get the best out of people). We shot the pieces to camera (PTC) using two Canon DSLR cameras, one locked off as a wide with a 50mm lens and one with a 70-200mm F4 lens zooming in and out getting close-ups and medium head shots. Each camera was set to the same aperture, ISO, White balance and shutter speed. The white infinity curve within the studio was blasted with two 650w Arri lights and the PTC’s were lit with a softbox and two dedolights. We had Mark on sound and Claire on-set as Producer and client liaison.

All the post-production was completed in Final Cut Pro and the graphics were animated in After Effects, re-creating each of the graphics supplied by Cake as solid layers and animating each part individually. STANDBY produced 5x films in total, one that gives an overall feel for what Cake are all about and the 4 others detailing each service they offer. They can all be found on the Cake Vimeo page and soon on their website: https://vimeo.com/cakesolutions/videos

>FILM >WATCH >ENOJY >REPEAT