Before Mel Lawson recorded a single episode of her podcast, we spent an afternoon in the studio working out how it should look and sound.

Before we met, the only videos Sara and Rhi had made were 30 or 40 seconds on their phones for Instagram. So before the shoot I suggested a rehearsal, and Rhi wrote back, “Yes please to a coaching session.” I asked them to read every line out loud the way they'd say it on the day, so they'd know how it felt to say before the cameras came out.

Most of the coaching has happened on set. For his website film we set his script out on the prompter one breath to a line, so the pauses fell where he needed them. And since May 2026 we've filmed him with a teleprompter, so he can read lines he wrote himself and keep his mind on how he's saying them.

We started with a questionnaire and a two-hour strategy session in September 2024, and a fortnight later we had a three-hour one. Then I wrote her a marketing strategy for Mecca Elevated that ran to more than sixty pages, and it set out how we'd approach her course films and her social clips.

Before our session Jon sent me links to his existing material, and I sent him a questionnaire to fill in over Easter. Then we spent four hours together at Plus X in Brighton, and his answers turned into most of the list of films.

On 18 January Alex and I spent the afternoon at Projects lighting the set and filming a test with Mel and Liv. I sent Liv a rough cut that weekend with a few different looks, and she preferred the one with more depth in the background, and I was with her on that, so that's the one we built on.

And when I heard a bit of echo in the first edit, I told her what we'd change on the next filming day, which was where the microphones sat, and sound blankets on the floor and far walls if the room still needed them.

I said to him while we were filming his interview that the whole method is really just holding up a mirror, and for what he knew about Notion and about running a business, that was true. The market research was the new part, and it's what pointed us to chartered surveyors first.

Before anyone was filmed I wrote a guide for our strategy session, and when we sat down with Donna and Alex in April we worked out who on the team should be on camera and which people outside the hospital Rockinghorse most wanted to reach.

Ahead of our planning call I watched the reference videos Katie had sent me, and I asked them to think about where the films would live, whether that was on their website or at the top of their LinkedIn profiles.

The proposal I wrote her set out what the films were for and where they'd go first, which was YouTube and LinkedIn, and it suggested an interview about how Orchard began and a short introduction to what Orchard does. Both of those ended up in the finished set.

Helene wrote the script for the video on her website herself, and I kept my changes small, because I didn't want to change her wording so much that she might sound too American. Then I asked her to read it out loud, to check it still flowed naturally for her before it went on the teleprompter.

We wrote a script for each of the four films, and a fifth for the short standalone pieces. Sara and Rhi brought their changes to the rehearsal, and we made them that same afternoon. Those are the versions they filmed.

Undray writes his own scripts, and they're good. Before we filmed the one for his website in September, we went through it line by line and set it out for the prompter two ways, once exactly as he'd written it and once tightened, so we could choose on the day.

Mecca wrote the first script herself, for Self Sabotage, and it was good. She'd written it in her natural tone and came across as a guide, so my notes were mostly small things about delivery. After that I drafted the scripts for three of her courses, starting with Imposter Syndrome, along with a list of topics for her social clips and draft scripts for them.

I always make time for photos on a project like this, so we did two sets for Jon. The first came out of the spring filming, and when we filmed his testimonial in January 2024 I took 43 new headshots the same day.

I'd told Liv we'd try to grab photos when there was a chance, so she'd have some for the show's website and socials. We took a set on the set-up day, and the gallery went to her that same evening.

The strategy also set out what he should publish and how often, with two LinkedIn articles a month, a short screen-recorded demo every week and a seminar in Brighton every month or two.

Each of the team we filmed in May had a brief from us first, with a hook for each video, the points to cover and how to end it. And the first outline we wrote for Donna's films at the hospital was built to open on what she'd told us in that strategy session: “Think Rockinghorse is just about toys and Easter eggs?”

I told them it wouldn't have to be stuffy or rehearsed, and I suggested a few ways of filming that might feel natural, like chatting while they walked around, telling stories over a cup of tea or interviewing each other. On the day we filmed them in conversation and then interviewed each of them.

I filmed her on two cameras, and when I edited the films I cut between the two angles using my best judgement and set up a caption template for her, so the films would look like they belonged together.

In 2022 I added her logo and a text intro to one of her videos, ready to do the rest the same way, and I recut one of her films with animated captions, a title and sound effects.

Then in 2023, when she was thinking about using the videos we'd made for her on her website and social media, I introduced her to an editor who does that kind of work, and suggested she look at her podcast interviews too.

In our strategy session in April we settled on decision-making as the theme for The Decision Loop. That same day I sent them a set of questions about the people in their client organisations who champion their work, and the ones who hold the budget. Their answers came back in May and went into the Champion Pack.

On 26 August 2025 we photographed him as well as filming him, and there are 80 portraits from that afternoon, taken inside, out on a terrace and up on a rooftop.

From November we worked out her talking points together on video calls, three hours at a time, rehearsing them out loud and refining them until they sounded like her, and I recorded those calls so we could turn what she said into the scripts. So by the time she stood in front of the camera, she'd already said most of it before.

I wanted three cameras on every recording, with the wide as a backup, because it's often the angle that lets you cut between sections cleanly in the edit. I also built an animated version of the show's logo for the edits.

In September I ran a workshop for the team on building their confidence on camera. We watched one of Fran's films together, and I said what I liked about it was that it was honest and concise, and that people would connect with that far more than with a song and a dance and chasing trends.

Jamarl spent the day photographing them while I filmed, and the photos went to them nine days later.

I'm insistent on adding photographs whenever we're hired for video, so at the conference we took photographs of the day while we filmed it.

The plan gives every fortnight one job. In one, readers are asked to try the four sentences from The Decision Loop in their own meetings. We've also written their newsletter pieces for the first three months, and each one opens on a moment from a meeting, like a decision that keeps coming back to the agenda.

In 2026 each of his editors got a brief from us with his brand colours, the gold and dark brown from the One Root logo, and his captions are white with the key words in gold, which is how he asked for them. I look at the cuts before he does. Back in 2024 I sent two of his videos back because the graphics still had dollar signs on them, and Undray works in pounds.

Because she was flying in, I planned the five days before she arrived and booked a yoga studio with a vaulted ceiling for the courses. The rest of the time we spent in a forest for the course-page film, out on the London streets and in Camden Market for the clips, and on rooftops and in a coworking space with a podcast set-up.

The first cuts had both of them on screen in rounded frames, and Katie said she'd rather see whoever was talking, so we re-cut them that way.