Calgary based · shooting across Alberta
Capturing the feeling of an old-world day at the races
Packwood Grand is the city's most refined day at the races, an invitation only celebration of old-world leisure, high fashion, champagne and sophistication. If the event sells on feeling, the film has to make you feel it too.
Packwood Grand came to us looking for a new video partner. The previous year's coverage had missed the thing that matters most at an event like this. Not enough tight shots: the smiles, the glances, the small unguarded moments that make a luxury event feel like an experience worth being part of.
For an event built on aspiration and atmosphere, footage that captures the scene but not the feeling doesn't do its job.
Three approaches, running all day, each doing something the others couldn't.
The film finally captured what the year before had missed. The smiles, the elegance, the old-world energy of the day, all of it on screen.
The client was thrilled, and the footage recaptured exactly the emotion they had set out to convey.
Not a shot list. The thing an invitation only event actually sells, put on screen so the people who were not there still want to be.
The event film for Packwood Grand, an invitation only day at the races in Calgary and Edmonton. The brief was emotion rather than coverage, so the shoot was built around candid feeling: telephoto for unguarded moments, drone for scale, and an action cam for movement.
A long lens lets you capture real reactions from a respectful distance. Guests stay relaxed because nobody is standing in front of them, and the compression flatters both the fashion and the faces. Short lenses get coverage. Long lenses get feeling.
An action cam mounted on a champagne bottle carried through the crowd, giving one sequence a completely different point of view from everything else in the cut. It is the kind of shot that makes an audience feel inside the room rather than watching it.
Yes. Packwood Grand runs in both Calgary and Edmonton and the coverage was built to feel like one continuous event rather than two separate shoots.
You plan for it. Coverage is a shot list. Emotion is a set of decisions about lens choice, distance, timing and edit rhythm made before the day starts, so the crew is looking for the glance and the laugh rather than ticking off wide shots.
Book a 30 minute strategy call. We will work out what your event actually sells, then build the film that makes people want in.
