With Oyster Card in hand and lightweight shooting kit on my back I was off to film one of the final locations of the Eiger Safety promotional DVD today. This time I was heading towards the Hilton London Metropolitan in Edgeware Road. Being up at the crack of dawn for a 6:45 rendezvous at Marble Arch was no fun – but at least I wasn’t suffering on my own. Everyone on the tube at this time of the morning (and more so at this time of year) rarely look like they want to be there – so I snapped it on Instagram.
Apart from signalling the nearing of the end of this year-long promotional DVD filming schedule, the subject of the day’s shoot was vital in telling the story of Eiger Safety as we were capturing their guys performing two of their most frequently performed tasks – namely eye-bolt installation and testing.
Health & Safety regulations touch us all these days and one of the major areas is height safety systems and procedures. Eiger Safety cover pretty much everything within this sphere. These eye-bolts provide a safe tethering point for those working near to height hazards. Whilst they are installed in many different locations and for different height risks, the ones I filmed today were being installed in hotel rooms to enable the staff and contractors to safely clean, inspect and maintain windows and openings.
Apart from installing thousands of these anchor points each year they all have an annual re-testing requirement too. It was therefore important to get a fair bit of the guys doing the final test on the newly installed eye-bolts. It might not have been as exciting as some of the other locations and activities I’ve filmed for them (Clifton Suspension Bridge was my favourite) – but nonetheless the film would be incomplete and almost pointless promotional DVD without it.
The next location shoot will be the last (mind you – they’ve said that before) and will cover the installation of handrail systems – another huge part of Eiger Safety’s work. These are pretty much all outside locations so I’m praying for the weather to warm up for that day. After that it’ll be some studio work in filming an interview with the MD to use as a narrative for a longer form version I’m producing for them. This is in addition to the original brief of creating a short 3-min piece set to music that will form the opening part of a PowerPoint sales presentation. I love it when jobs expand! : )