Algeria AgencyDigital marketing
Filming without closing: shooting inside a business that is open
The equipment is not the problem. The problem is filming while you serve, with customers in shot and one pair of hands.
The article accompanying this one deals with the object: what a video has to show, the sound you never recover, subtitles as the text, the duration. It assumes settled a question it does not treat, because that question is not its province.
The question is: at what moment, and with whose hands? A business that films is a business serving customers at the same time, in premises where other people are present who asked for none of this.
These are problems of organisation and consent, not of technique. They nonetheless decide everything: most video efforts in small businesses do not stop because the pictures were poor, but because nobody had twenty minutes, or because the person who filmed left with the phone.
This article therefore treats filming as an operation that has to fit inside a working day: when, who, what you ask the people present, what is never filmed, and where the files end up.
Filming is not a project, it is a morning that comes round again
The first decision is one of form, and it determines whether the rest survives six months.
The form that fails is the project: a day set aside, a provider, a shot list, a result far above the usual — and then nothing for four months, because doing it again would mean the same day again.
The form that holds is the short, regular session. Twenty minutes, every other week, at the same moment, with the phone that is already there. Each session’s result is less good; the result over a year does not compare.
The reason is the one the article on the content calendar develops: what exhausts people is not the effort of one occasion, it is resuming. A short session is resumed; a filming day is postponed.
A practical consequence for the rest of this article: everything described here has to fit in twenty minutes and be done by one person. What does not fit is treated separately, in the section on closing.
When to film, and why it is not the quiet hour
The reflex is to film when nobody is there. It is the most convenient moment and often the worst.
An empty business shows in the picture. The atmosphere, the movements, the background noise, people passing: that is exactly what video contributes and a photograph cannot show, and the quiet hour removes it.
The right moment is the beginning of a busy period rather than its trough or its peak. The shop is in order, there is movement, and you are not yet overwhelmed. Concretely: opening rather than mid-afternoon, the start of service rather than the rush.
There is one clear exception, and it is filming that demands precision — a slow handling, a shot that needs three attempts, something fragile. That is done in the quiet, and it is better known while planning the session than discovered halfway through it.
Fix the moment once and keep it. A session whose hour is renegotiated every fortnight is a session that will not happen the third time, and the hour matters less than the fact of it having been decided.
Who holds the phone while you serve
This is the constraint nothing gets around: the two roles cannot be held by the same person at the same instant.
Three arrangements work and one has to be chosen explicitly. An employee films the owner working. The owner films an employee working. Or the phone sits on a stand and nobody holds it — which is the only arrangement available when you are alone.
The third deserves being taken seriously rather than endured. A well-placed fixed shot, at eye height and not on the floor, produces a perfectly usable picture; what it does not produce is a change of angle, which forces a different way of cutting.
The person filming should be the same one from session to session, for a reason that is not artistic: they learn in three sessions what to frame, and that learning does not transfer by being described.
Name them, and give them the twenty minutes within their working time. Filming done "when they have a moment" is filming that eats into somebody’s break, and it is the surest way to watch it disappear without anybody announcing it.
Customers in shot: what you ask, and of whom
Filming in a place open to the public puts people in the picture who did not come for that, and the question is settled before the session rather than during it.
The rule we apply is simple and stricter than what many practise: you ask, out loud, every recognisable person. One sentence does it — "I am filming a short video for the page, does that bother you?" — and a refusal is accepted without negotiation or insistence.
For a minor, the question is not put to the minor. It is put to the parent present, and in their absence you do not film. It is the only rule in this article with no convenient exception.
Somebody may agree and then change their mind, including after publication, and it happens. The answer is to take it down without discussion and without asking why: the video is worth less than the relationship, and an upset person tells more people than the video reaches.
One framing choice avoids most of these situations: film the product, the hands, the gesture, the workbench. People then appear from behind, in the background, or not at all, and the question only arises where their presence is precisely the subject.
What is never filmed
A short list, decided once and posted if necessary, because it is easier to respect than to repair.
The till, the till screen, and anything displaying amounts or customer data. It looks obvious and it nonetheless goes past in the background of every second wide shot.
Stockrooms, the back of the shop and staff areas, unless explicitly decided otherwise. These are not secrets; they are places that are untidy by nature, and the impression given is of a badly kept business when it merely shows stock.
A competitor’s goods, an invoice, a purchase order, a work computer screen. These things arrive in shot by accident and get noticed afterwards, often by the person concerned.
And anything that will expire faster than the video: a price label, a promotion, posted opening hours. The section on reuse comes back to this, because it is the leading reason otherwise good footage is thrown away.
The noise of the place, and the moment it stops
The companion article says sound is the one mistake never recovered. This section is not about how to record but about the moment and the place where noise is bearable.
In an Algerian business the sources are known and recurring: the extractor or the air conditioning, traffic through an open door, the radio, work going on next door, the entry bell. None is fatal and all are predictable.
Walk round your premises once, listening, and note the two quietest spots and the hour at which the street is quiet. That list serves for years and takes ten minutes to draw up once.
The most profitable single act is to cut the source for twenty minutes where possible: turn off the radio, stop the extractor between services, close the door. What cannot be cut is got round by moving closer — speaking nearer the phone rather than louder.
Finally, if the sequence is explanatory, record the voice separately and in the quiet. It is the one case where editing recovers the place, and it is among the two or three things the companion article allows to be done in the edit.
The twenty-minute session, and what happens in it
Here is the concrete shape, because an instruction about duration with no content turns into an hour and a half the very first time.
Five minutes of preparation: clear the field of view, choose the spot from the list, set the stand, check the phone has space. That last check avoids the most banal failure of all.
Ten minutes of takes. Three or four short sequences, each redone once, not three times. The second take is almost always the good one; the fourth is slower and stiffer than the first.
Five minutes of clearing up, which includes the one thing nobody does: transfer the files immediately, to the agreed place, under the agreed name. The next section says which.
What does not fit in that quarter of an hour does not belong in the session. A more ambitious idea goes on a list and waits for the next one, which is also how you end up with ideas ready rather than improvising in front of the lens.
The phone that leaves with the person
This is the commonest and most complete loss, and it does not look like an incident: somebody leaves, and two years of footage leaves with them.
The typical situation is ordinary. The filming was done on the personal phone of the employee handling it, because that was simplest and nobody thought about anything else. The files were never anywhere else.
This is not the case the article on the keys to your page treats, and the difference is worth stating. Access to an account can be recovered, because a procedure and an owner exist. A file on a device that is no longer on the premises cannot be recovered, and there is nothing to claim from anybody.
The remedy is not buying a phone. It is deciding that files do not stay on the device: they are transferred at the end of each session to a space belonging to the business, and the device used becomes irrelevant.
The corollary, uncomfortable and necessary: filming on somebody’s personal device requires their agreement and assumes they will hand the files over. That is said at the moment you ask them, not on the day they leave.
Where the files live, and under what name
Storage decides reuse, and reuse is what makes filming pay. A library you cannot find is worth nothing.
One place, belonging to the business, known to at least two people. The medium hardly matters; what matters is that it is not the personal account of whoever films, for the reason in the previous section.
A file name beginning with the date in figures, then two words. The date first because the sorting then happens by itself in chronological order, with no folders and no additional discipline.
Two folders are enough: raw footage and published videos. A finer structure looks better at the moment it is created and is no longer respected a month later, which is worse than no folders at all.
And keep the raw footage, including what came to nothing. The next edit draws on it more often than people expect, and the only thing keeping it costs is space, which is the cheapest resource on this list.
What can be reused next year, and what expires
Part of what you film will still be usable in two years, and another part will be unusable in two months. The difference is decided at the shoot, not in the edit.
What lasts: hands, the gesture, the material, the workshop, the preparation, the product without its price. None of that carries a date, and such footage is recut indefinitely under other words.
What expires fast: a visible price, a promotional poster, opening hours, an identifiable season, an employee you do not know will still be there. The last is the most delicate and has to be thought about without cynicism — filming gestures rather than faces leaves the question open.
Hence one simple instruction that greatly raises a session’s value: film the same sequence twice, once with the dated element and once without. The second is the one you will still have next year.
The same applies to the sign and the shopfront, which change more often than people plan for. A good atmospheric sequence becomes unusable the day the name behind it is no longer the right one.
The one case where you should close
Everything above consists of not closing. There is one case where that is the wrong answer, and it has to be recognised so that nobody persists.
It is a sequence that demands the whole place, silence, and several takes: a minute of speaking to camera, a long demonstration, a full tour of the workshop. Attempted during service it fails four times and costs an hour instead of twenty minutes.
The right decision then is to block out a slot outside opening hours, once, and produce several things in it at one go. It is an accepted exception to regularity, not a return to the "project" form: it happens twice a year and is planned like an intervention, with a written list.
The list is indispensable precisely because the place is empty. Filming with no customers has no event to give the session its rhythm, and without a list it produces an hour of hesitant material.
A sign for recognising it in advance: if the sequence requires somebody to speak uninterrupted for more than thirty seconds, it belongs to that slot and not to the twenty-minute session.
What we do, and what we refuse
What we do is limited and it transfers. We come to the first two sessions, we fix the moment and the spot with you, we set up the storage and the naming convention, and we write the sentence to say to customers. After that you film without us, which is the point.
We refuse to film recognisable people without having asked them, including when it slows the session down and including when the business tells us it is not necessary. That is not a legal position; it is the only one that stays defensible the day somebody recognises themselves and is not happy.
We also refuse to keep your footage. It stays with you, on your space, from the end of each session: a provider hosting the library becomes a provider you cannot leave, and a video library is exactly the kind of asset that should outlive us.
Finally, there is one thing you can do this week without us: walk round your premises listening, note the two quietest spots, and set the phone at eye height to film twenty seconds of an ordinary gesture. You will then know whether the problem is the equipment — it almost never is — or the organisation, which is the subject of this article.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to close in order to film?
Almost never. An empty business shows in the picture and removes exactly what video contributes. The only case justifying a slot outside opening hours is a sequence demanding the whole place, silence and several takes — a minute to camera, a workshop tour. Twice a year, planned, with a written list, because an empty place has no event to give the session its rhythm.
What do we say to customers who are there?
One sentence, out loud, to every recognisable person: "I am filming a short video for the page, does that bother you?" A refusal is accepted without insisting. For a minor the question goes to the parent present, and in their absence you do not film. If somebody changes their mind after publication, take it down without discussion — the video is worth less than the relationship.
Who films if I am alone in the shop?
The phone on a stand, at eye height and not on the floor. It is an arrangement in its own right rather than a fallback: a well-placed fixed shot gives a perfectly usable picture. What it does not give is a change of angle, so film two or three short sequences from two positions rather than one long one from a single position.
Can we film on an employee’s personal phone?
Yes, with their agreement and on one condition: the files are transferred to a company space at the end of every session. Without that, their departure takes everything, and there is nothing to claim from anybody — account access can be recovered, a file on a device that has left the premises cannot. Say so when you ask them, not on the day they leave.
How should files be named and stored?
The date in figures first, then two words. Chronological sorting then happens by itself, with no folder structure to maintain. Two folders are enough: raw and published. Keep the raw even when it came to nothing — the next edit often draws on it, and space is the cheapest resource on the list.
How do we avoid refilming the same shots every year?
Film the same sequence twice: once with the dated element — a price, a poster, a season — and once without. The second will still serve in two years. What lasts is hands, the gesture, the material and the product without its price; what expires is anything carrying a date, including the shopfront when the sign changes.
Where we come in
Walking your premises while listening costs ten minutes and settles half the sound problems. The other half is an hour of the day, and it depends on the street.
- We sit in on the two opening sessions, then leave you to run them alone.
- We fix the slot at the hour your street is quietest.
- We ask recognisable people for their consent, even where that costs time.
If you cannot free twenty minutes a fortnight with a named person, do not open this: it will stop at the third session.
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