Former SSC TV & Film students win award with their own production company

FootFox Productions Ltd. is a media company formed of two co-directors, Ben Hatfield and Callum Thorpe, who met in South Staffordshire College as students at Lichfield College. Ben studied Journalism with us at college and Callum studied TV & Film, before both went on to study our Foundation Degree in Film & TV Production for three years at University level, which is accredited by Staffordshire University. FootFox has been around since August 2018 and has been going from strength to strength ever since.

Before 2020, FootFox primarily focused on filming on location and the majority of their work came from live events, such as Boxing and MMA matches. They pride themselves on consistently high quality visual media services with a quick turnover rate for each project. This quality of service and extreme attention to detail became their USP over the years and they have had many complements on the lengths they go to in order to provide brilliant services consistently. However, when COVID-19 hit, FootFox found themselves needing to adapt, yet still managed to find ways to provide excellent service to their clients in times of need. They filmed for a bakery looking to create an online bread course to help the public through their lockdown boredom and filmed tours for schools to aid them in educating the next year of students when open day events were unavailable. They also taught themselves 2D motion graphic animation techniques that ensured they could deliver projects to clients that were of a great quality from a distance when on-location filming could not take place.

FootFox believes they were nominated for the annual Prestige Awards by one of their clients and after all of the evidence had been looked at, the judges of the awards said that they “were impressed with your team’s personal touch, consistency of reviews and overall attentiveness. You seem to go over and above for your clients and I hope this achievement brings more success during these difficult times. Hopefully things go back to normal soon. I am extremely pleased to announce you have been successful in winning the award for Corporate Video Production Service of the Year – West Midlands – Central England”.

We caught up with Ben from FootFox who wanted to say: “a huge thank you to the community that has supported us as we grew from students to a directors. The friends we made at the Lichfield campus of South Staffordshire College that stayed with us through our time at Staffordshire University. To the members of staff there, such as Lynsey Hartless-Brown, Mike Gooch, Bill Bell, Leanne Knapman-Humphries, Ethan Hanson, and Steve Hewitt, who not only invested knowledge into us but attention and time to let us grow and talk about the things we loved. They helped us bring our own individual interests into our studies to help them feel fresh and enjoyable. These staff members turned from being just teachers into mentors we could always turn to and then eventually into treasured friends of ours. We couldn’t be more thankful for everything they added to our years in education.

The fundamentals we learned about camera work and editing in college are still the backbone of the projects we take on today. Combining our academic learning with our own interests and styles, which was instilled into us by the staff members, allows us to be passionate about each job we take on and to offer new angles and insights that our clients may have not thought about before collaborating with the FootFox team”.

A huge well done to Ben, Callum and the team at FootFox for an excellent and well-deserved achievement. If you would like to follow in their footsteps, you can apply for our Film, TV and Journalism courses starting at Lichfield College this September to #CreateYourCareer.