Royal Air Force
I have had the privilege of working for the Royal Air Force for over 3 years now. In that time, I’ve overseen six seasons of the multi-national award winning ‘Find Your Force’ podcast, I’ve toured the Falklands creating video and still image content, produced multiple live broadcasts, social campaigns (both video and stills) and more all in aid of the RAF’s recruitment of young people.
Find Your Force
The Find Your Force podcast is the leading digital campaign for RAF recruitment. Season 1 was a simple, audio-only podcast that I served as technical director for. By season 3, we were out in the real world interviewing people in their day jobs. For Season 5, I oversaw creative direction on the project to throw our host and guests into some really unique environments - not spaces you’d expect to see a podcast take place; including off roading in military vehicles!
Click the photo to head over to the Find Your Force website to check out all the content.
The Falklands
A major benefit of working for the RAF is the international travel opportunities. What better way to showcase this than actually filming on location! I lead a micro-crew of 3 people on over 16 hours of flying to get to the windy isles of the Falklands.
We spent the week filming penguins, fighter jets and more to capture the real working and living environment of the Falklands - a place few people ever get to experience.
For this content, we produced both video and still images.
Adventure Training
Second to international travel, the other selling point of the RAF is its Adventure Training. My team were tasked with capturing a huge variety of activities, including caving, kayaking, white water swimming, abseiling, hiking, klettersteig and more.
The only way to film and photograph these activities? To get stuck in! Managing a camera crew while suspended 50ft above a river in Austria, 1km deep inside a cave in Wales or atop a mountain in the German Alps is no easy task, but certainly a memorable one.
Click the image to see just one of the videos produced for the Adventure Training branch.
Live Broadcast
The RAF had a need to reach young people in a unique manner to stand out amongst recruitment competitors so we hatched a plan to take them live!
Since the inaugural broadcast in Summer 2022, the RAF have hosted, or been part of 5 online broadcasts reaching tens of thousands of viewers. These Live’s were broadcast from all sorts of places, even an active helicopter hanger and a fighter jet training hanger! I was responsible for overseeing both creative and technical direction on all broadcasts.
Click the image to see the highlights of one of these livestreams!
Cinematic Campaigns
Long-form content wasn’t the only focus of our RAF Recruitment content - short form made up a huge amount of time too. My job was to create digital content for the social platforms to differ from what TV campaigns were running.
This took me and my team all over the RAF, from surveillance bunkers, to airfield firefighters, to close quarters combat, to trying to make the HR department of the RAF look ‘sexy’!
Each shoot was a challenge to make look unique but the client was always open to ideas.
Click the image to check out the hero video for the Regiment’s social campaign.
Photography
Moving image isn’t the only way to attract talent to the RAF, still images on social media, if displayed correctly, can bring great value.
Amongst the other projects I have managed for the RAF, I was also tasked with capturing still images for departments and teams throughout the Royal Air Force.
A lot of the above projects would include still photography as well. During my time with the RAF I’ve had the pleasure of photographing the Falklands, Medical teams, People Operations, Adventure Training and even more.