By Adam Wakefield
Grech’s expertise, originating from a technical background in film and photography, has seen her bring these skills to South Africa and elsewhere through the workshops she runs for publicity and advertising professionals.
It is in these sessions where Grech elaborates on what she refers to as the “nuggets of filmmaking”. She elaborates on some of them.
“People judge you in the first five seconds before you open your mouth. How you are standing, what you are doing with your arms. If you walk left to right or right to left, it will put someone at ease or not. It’s about how you can make someone connect with you,” Grech explains.
Grech visited South Africa last year where she also conducted workshops, and following her experiences this year and last, she is convinced that South Africa’s PR, marketing and advertising industries are on the cusp of a video content boom.
“South Africa, at the moment, is sitting on what I call a goldmine, they’re just not seeing it. It’s just not quite there. I always say the only thing that is stopping you is the fear,” she says.
The fear?
The fear, as Grech explains it, is the fear of failure. It is the fear of looking silly on camera; the fear of saying the wrong thing; the fear of not knowing the ins and outs of film-making.
“There’s a million excuses, but as we’ve brought people through the workshop, they get better at it,” she says.
When dealing with South Africans in her workshops, Grech notes that a word she hears a lot is “perfect”, which she believes is counter-productive.
“The only reason I’m sitting here with you today is because I failed so badly and so often. The more I failed, the more success I’ve had. My journey into film was horrific,” Grech says with a smile. “My company almost went broke when I went into photography for the first year. Film was even worse, but because I got it so wrong, I had to do it right.”
Grech believes the workshops she conducted on this year’s trip were successful because someone was willing to do it wrong in front of the whole class, who were close enough and small enough, that it made the environment a safe place.
“We made it look safe to look really bad and stupid but when everyone is making mistakes, that’s when everyone is really learning,” she says.
Beyond ensuring her subjects get their message across on screen, Grech emphasises the importance of staying up to date with the latest techniques, hardware and trends. The universal truth is if you do not, you will get left behind.
“I can give you an analogy in my own industry; when we still had film in camera and when the first digital camera came out, it costs thousands and thousands of pounds to swap over to digital. It was a lot of money,” Grech says.
However, those photographers that didn’t move over and stayed where they are, soon didn’t have a business
For those in the PR and advertising spaces, this means that not using video is detrimental to their business, with its use as a publicity and marketing tool becoming ubiquitous across both industries.
The statistics say more than four fifths of visitors to your home page will watch a video that’s on your home page. “If you don’t have video and have text instead, about 13% are likely to stay and read it, ” she says. That alone tells its own story. Unless you embrace technology, you get left behind, whether you like it or not.