Although I won’t be one of the 45% of people doing DIY this Bank Holiday (don’t want to get too ahead of myself- I think I need to actually move out of home before I think of home improvements!) but for many people this weekend means donning those dungarees and getting out the paint brush.

Teaming up with DFS to promote their Designers Choice Range, Alice was a great guest, speaking to the 7 radio stations we booked in about her personal experiences she’s encountering while converting her own house at the moment. It sounds like a pretty hefty task to take on converting both the basement and loft (as she is doing) but she gave some great tips to avoid arguments and conflict of agreement to make the process run smoothly.

Alice Beer, Broadcast Journalist, at TNR for DFS Radio Day.

One of the main points that stood out from the topic was that our homes are becoming more and more important to us. One finding was that people are willing to sacrifice holidays, buying news clothes and eating out, all in a bid to make over a room!

In these economic times, where there is a clear struggle for many people to get by on a day to day basis, making our homes beautiful is clearly becoming something we are putting high on our priority lists. Strapped for cash, and let’s face it – living in a drab and dreary, wet and windy time – the home is once again becoming the place for us to get creative and, for women (according to this story anyway)- take charge!

Post by Daisy Bambridge, Production Support @ TNR Communications

TNR Photograph – David Parry

Unsurprisingly the day had a very pink feel to it with Pink umbrellas, Pink pints and Pink rugby balls on show. There was a touch rugby session for kids, with advice and tips from former England and British & Irish Lion player Matt Dawson. While the kids played in the park, parents were either crowding the current players who are off to tour Australia, or loitering around the BBQ which was manned by former England and British & Irish Lion Phil Vickery. Phil was cooking up kangaroo burgers which were available alongside Pink pints to wash them down.

After the various events outside had finished, everyone crammed into ‘The Pink Lion’ to meet and chat to Lions legends, past and present. Captain Sam Warburton, George North, Rob Kearney, Geoff Parling and Ben Youngs all spoke to people, shared stories of previous seasons and their hopes for the tour, while Matt Dawson & Phil Vickery recounted their experiences.

Lions tours are one of the great traditions that remain in the professional era and access to the players at events like this is definitely something that should be maintained. It was a fantastic day put on by Thomas Pink which attracted big crowds with young & old enjoying themselves.

I for one can’t wait for the first test match and I’m backing us to win the series 2-1 against the Aussies. Our last series win was 1997 which feels like a long time ago now and I’m confident this crop of Lions will do the job!

Post by Alex Waite, Marketing Manager @ TNR Communications

Tweets by @TNRnews

I met Daniele (Production Assistant)  and was told we were to travel to South Wimbledon which was where the Nescafe photo shoot was taking place.

We were filming behind-the-scenes footage for the Nescafe 75^th anniversary photo shoot. The photo shoot was to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of Nescafe by incorporating the red Nescafe mugs into iconic events in history.

The first day was the shooting of the London Olympics and the Spice Girl’s at the BRIT awards scenes. The shoot took place on a fake street where The Bill had previously been filmed, in a fake sweet shop.

The weather was bitingly cold that day and it crept in from the outside. The model had to wear a vest and bicycle shorts and all the while holding a Nescafe mug up in his outstretched arm, and all I kept on thinking was poor bloke. How people suffer for their art!

A small disused, and somewhat dull room was transformed into the Spice Girls locker room for the 1996 BRIT awards. It looked amazing! Complete with the outfits they wore that night (we can reflect now and gauge that they were hideous), make up mirrors, stalls, a huge range of cosmetics and of course the Nescafe mugs.

What I had been oblivious to before my first day is that the photographer, along with the stylist, the model and those that are paying for the services will spend relentless time and hundreds of photos to obtain that perfect picture. I was watching perfectionists at work!

The second day was even colder and it didn’t help that the whole shoot was to take place outside on that fake street. It was the recreation of the Queens coronation which took place in 1953. A street party complete with twenty patriots were to have their picture taken, which including people from all ages. That meant children! And party meant sweets and sugar. Combining these factors with the bitter cold the word hectic sprang to mind.

However I was very surprised by how professional everybody was, including the children, and to manage everybody and get the shots needed before attention spans started to fizzle out and hands started wandering toward the cakes.

The final day of shooting on location was the Swinging Sixties recreation. Two young female models were to pose in a bedroom, (again in that fake sweet shop) complete with complete sixties styles. There was an infusion of colour, fashion and smoke. Pictures were moved, colour palettes were swapped around to create the perfect teenagers bedroom from the 1960’s.

Everyone spent hours setting up scenes, tweaking bits and pieces here and there, making sandwiches for a tea party, coordinating people into place, getting people dressed and in make up, hauling all the equipment needed and it was all to obtain that one perfect shot for each scene to celebrate Nescafe’s 75^th birthday.

Post by Nathan Tansley, Production Intern @ TNR Communications

While there have been previous attempts by ESPN and Setanta to knock Sky off their perch as the largest paid for sports provider in the UK, early signs show this could be a serious contender with shares in BSkyB falling by more than 5% initially.

TNR Photograph appeared in the Independent

Whether or not customers will actually be better off by switching from Sky to BT to quench their sport thirst is hard to say as both offer slightly different packages. However competition is usually a good thing for consumers, and I’m sure sports fans around the UK are pleased to have more options available to them.

TNR Photography left to right appeared in the Metro and the Daily Telegraph

Post by Alex Waite, Marketing Manager @ TNR Communications

Mo Farah

As part of London 2012 The National Lottery launched the Olympic Park Run where 5,000 members of the public had the chance to take part in a run that would see them crossing the Olympic Stadium finish line.  In April this year Olympic Champion Mo Farah was on hand to launch The National Lottery Anniversary Run, which follows the same idea and is part of the Olympic legacy.

We produced photography and video content for this story so we’ll let Mo tell you the rest…

This image made it to The Guardian, Daily Mirror, Metro, The Sun and Daily Mail (to name a few)

I had the pleasure of assisting on this shoot with our Production Manager Rhian so you can see some behind the scene shots below:

Mo Farah crosses the finish line to celebrate the launch

Our cameraman Marcus and soundman Ben capture the launch

Boris Johnson

Mayor of London Boris Johnson helped head chef Fred Ponnavoy make a chocolate souffle during his visit to the Gu development kitchen in Walthamstow, London, to mark the London-based premium dessert company's 10th birthday.

We produced photography for this story, one of which made our Photo of the Week:

David Seaman

Producer Elizabeth got to meet one of England's best ever goalkeepers!  Being a football fan you can imagine how jealous I was.  Safe hands Seaman was saving penalties on a pop up football pitch in Trafalgar Square, London, to mark the arrival of Sky Sports Channels' pay as you go on NOW TV in the UK.  He was joined by Sky Sports 'legend' Jeff Stelling.  This was an interesting one for us because we had a cameraman capturing a timelapse of the football pitch construction through the night, then the rest of our crew joined him early morning to interview the keeper that made 568 appearances for Arsenal.

You can watch Seaman in action here (includes timelapse footage)...

To level the playing field I couldn't resist...

Sarah Brown

In April, Child Rights Ambassador Sarah Brown presented a special UK preview of a feature film on the transformative power of girls’ education, narrated by a host of Hollywood stars (Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Alicia Keys, Liam Neeson, to name a few).

We were commissioned by Plan UK to produce an editorial video.  It was placed on The Independent, Harpers Bazaar and Yahoo, to name a few.

You can hear more from Sarah Brown through the video below:

Post by Daniele Baron, Production Assistant @ TNR Communications

However Tourism Australia are launching their second campaign of the “Best job in the World”, and this year it’s bigger and better!

With 6 incredible jobs to boast and a contract worth a staggering £67k for 6 months, it seems impossible that this can even pass as work!  This time around the jobs include an outback adventurer in the Northern Territory; a park ranger in Queensland; a wildlife caretaker in South Australia; a ‘lifestyle photographer’ in Melbourne; a ‘taste master’ in Western Australia; and ‘chief funster’ in New South Wales.

TNR were there at the launch of the campaign, filming the TV release and the press photography for Tourism Australia at London Waterloo.

With a lifeguard on show for the ladies, a beautiful brunette in a striking red bikini for the chaps and a giant kangaroo and koala for everyone else in between, it made for a great photocall and attracted a fair bit of attention as you can imagine

In 2009, Briton Ben Southall rose to the top of a 34,000 high applicant pile, gathered from over 200 countries to win.  The lucky 34 year old got to explore the islands of the Great Barrier Reef, snorkel and swim, whilst making friends with the locals and basically enjoy the tropical Queensland climate and lifestyle.  Not a bad way to spend 6 months…

Post by Tinashe Sithole @ TNR Communications

 The shoot was for the launch of Cadbury’s hunt to find an honorary Cadbury Chocolate Taste Tester at The British Library, featuring ‘The Great Chocolate Mixionary’. The search was launched by asking the public to tweet in the one word they would use to describe the taste of Cadbury’s. These words were then formed into pure chocolate by the Mixionary. Claudia Winkleman kicked off the event with her memoirs of being a chocoholic before bellowing national treasure Brian Blessed emerged booming out the best twitted words to complement the Mixionary’s chocolate describe Cadbury’s chocolate.

Brian Blessed and Claudia Winkleman getting snapped.

As well as interviews with Brian and Claudia we also got to quiz the current Cadbury Chocolate Taster, Dave Shepard, on what it’s like to be a chocolate taster and how we could apply for the role. Dave spoke of his extensive years as a food technician specialising with a variety of foods before specialised in chocolate. My mind pictured a real life Willy Wonka before the distraction of chocolate became to much……

Interviewing David Shepard on his role as chocolate taster.

With the smell of melted chocolate wafting up our noses for the entire shoot we can be let off indulging our urges to acquire some free samples, for the whole TNR team, to scoff. However we may have had eyes bigger than our bellies when we picked up three goody bags crammed full of chocolately goodness to work our way through.

The Chocolate Goody Bag

Why not check out the final edited video.

Post by Andrew Clark, Production Intern @ TNR Communications

All my lens’s were too big to get a good picture through the tiny holes in the box and realising there was no other way I turned to the great enemy of the pro-photographer. Camera phones have never been a favourite thing of mine, even for shooting holiday snaps but it was the one thing with a lens small enough to shoot through the hole.

Thus rewarded with my grainy close up of a tiger, I became very interested to see if it would get used. It brought up some of the big questions in press photography, we all agree that the camera is a tool for the eye of the photographer, but this was a particularly unsophisticated tool. The question is at what point does the right picture become wrong due the poor quality of the tool used? I still don’t know the answer, the shot was used on the Mail Online.  I leave the decision to you.

Guest blog by regular TNR photograpgher David Parry

Unfortunately this is never an easy answer for a production company to give, as it depends on a number of factors. I can assure you that by asking questions, we aren’t trying to be a pain in the a*se; we are trying to pull out key info that will allow us to give you a quote that matches your brief and expectation.

I thought it would be useful to be list a few points to consider when you are looking to speak to a production company about a video brief. There may well be additional questions; but this should give you a great starting point in the planning stages.

Length of filming time for the crew

Is it a multiple location shoot?

This is important if you are trying to keep costs down. A large part of the cost of a video is hiring the film crew, so if you can keep all the filming time and locations to a minimum this will help.

Will you require interviews?

Depending on who the video is for, it’s normally best to have no more than 4 – 5 interviews. It is also important to work with an experienced producer who will be able to extract key sound bites from the interviews that can be integrated into the edit.

The amount of edit time

This is something that the production company will be able to advise you on, and is something that will affect cost. As with the number of interviews, days and locations, the number of edits will have an impact on cost.

However you can also benefit from economies of scale here as well. If you plan for multiple video activity and can capture all of your footage across a few days you can then edit it into a series of videos which will bring the overall cost down.

How many different edits are required?

I’m sure you are quickly becoming familiar with the ‘multi-channel story telling’ phrase. If you are planning to push the video content out to broadcasters, websites (editorial & specialist), social media site and bloggers then you need the right style to suit the platform and their audience.

Who is the audience?

This can dictate if graphics, animation, voiceover, music, grading etc need to be considered.

Of course we are always happy to run through all of these areas on the phone or in a meeting when clients are planning editorial or creative video, but I thought it would be good to show people why we can’t always give a rough cost straightaway!

Post by Alex Waite, Marketing Manager @ TNR Communications

Many listeners have seen this move as a loss to the community spirit local radio encourages.  The argument stems from the belief that a more widespread broadcast misses issues that affect local regions, with one listener commenting ‘Local radio should mean just that not this rubbish which is trying to be all things for all people but failing dismally.’

3,600 people on the BBC Radio Forum have objected to the cuts, while a further 2,600 listeners in Kent have appealed for former local evening radio host Roger Day to be reinstated.

The replacement broadcast is set to save the BBC £8 million from the £115 million local radio budget.

However, the Mark Forrest show does claim to feature the best local stories from around the UK and incorporates opt outs for regional breaking news and sport. The wider broadcast could mean that inspirational local stories will reach a larger audience and generate more impact. In addition, as the show only runs from 7pm – 10pm, it may produce the best of both worlds as it will allow local listeners to access stories from around the country while also providing a purely local aspect for the rest of the day.

As the current HS2 train route story has shown, anything that pits regional concerns against national issues is always controversial. Some people may say that this new national radio show destroys the community element of local radio, while other will see it as opening a wider window onto that very ethos. Either way it’s encouraging in this online era to see radio remaining central to so many people’s lives.

Post by Andrew Clark, Production Intern @ TNR Communications