"While I’m very happy that we’re a nice little village club,” says Ollie Price of Moccas CC in Herefordshire, “I see no reason why we can’t act like we’re a big professional club.”
Ollie is one of the beneficiaries of an innovative collaboration between the ECB and the BFI that has provided free training during the first half of the year for 11 employees and around 100 volunteers from across the cricket network in the professional and recreational games.
The project aims to give more people the skills to tell their unique cricketing stories using videos, showcasing the diversity of the sport in communities across England and Wales, at all levels of the game.
“The courses were full of people who have a cricketing story to tell,” explains BFI tutor Sa-Ra Zwarteveen, “whether that’s driving the game forward on or off the pitch, bringing more diversity to cricket or encouraging more women and girls to play.
“We helped them do that by equipping them with the skills needed to tell those stories in a contemporary way through film.”
Moccas, who play in the Herefordshire Marches League, are a one-team club whose chair and opening bowler has just turned 70. Ollie is the captain but, like club volunteers everywhere, has to pitch in as groundsman, committee member and fundraiser.
“The idea was to use this course as a platform to really propel the image of the club and gain more traffic to our social media channels,” says Ollie, whose Saturday mornings in March and April were filled with inspiring online instruction about how to turn modest smartphone footage into professional-standard content.
“I came in with zero knowledge or experience but I was able to film our Get Set Weekend in April and it was really well received,” he says. “I wouldn’t have had a hope of achieving that quality before. I want to do player-focused films and interviews, like you see on the pro clubs’ channels. It’s all about promoting the club and helping it to be sustainable long term.”
The BFI course has ensured that filmmaking is “easy and accessible” for a club volunteer like Ollie, with everything tailored to shooting and editing on a smartphone.
For the likes of Lauren Tuffrey, marketing and media officer for the Derbyshire Cricket Foundation (the charitable and community arm of the county club), there was a more advanced course for those who are engaged in the game professionally.
Lauren describes herself as “a one-person marketing department, and I do a bit of coaching on the side”. As well as coaching Derbyshire Under-15 girls, she also captains Lincolnshire Women. Her existing video skills were entirely self-taught before the BFI course, which took place online on Tuesday evenings and culminated in a location day at Trent Bridge.
Industry experts from BBC Sport also supported the course by helping participants with video production techniques at the location day at Trent Bridge, as well as attending one of the online sessions to offer advice and guidance.
“I’ve learnt techniques for editing existing footage to make it look like I shot it yesterday, using tools like colour grading,” explains Lauren. “Colleagues have really noticed how much better our content is and people outside the organisation are also noticing the content we’re posting now.”
Lauren has access to camera equipment beyond the smartphone but the course was tailored to specific needs. One of the most valuable takeaways for Lauren was how to repurpose the same footage to different social platforms: for example, Facebook requires a landscape (horizontal) format while TikTok needs a portrait (vertical) style.
“I try to put lots of shorter form content on TikTok,” says Lauren. “At our Easter course, a lot of the kids wanted me to film them trying a scoop shot or whatever. So I could produce an informative video for Facebook aimed at the parents and then something for the kids on TikTok and Instagram.
“It’s ignited a passion in me to do more video content,” concludes Lauren, who also wants to “help upskill the rest of our staff”.