About First Last Film

Andrew Maclean founded First Last Film in 2018, has been making films professionally for over a decade, and leads the team that makes its films. When you brief us, you're briefing the people who will make the film. The crew scales to the brief, so a single interview gets a small team and a shoot across several locations gets the people it needs.

The name comes from a simple idea, that every film should be made with the energy of a first film and the craft of a last one. Andrew still finds it remarkable that a few minutes of pictures and sound can change what somebody thinks. Between us we've made enough films to know which decisions make that happen and which ones quietly stop it.

What we do

First Last Film is a video production company in Woodbridge, Suffolk, working in London and across the UK, making corporate, brand and social films for businesses, charities and schools.

The range is deliberately broad, from brand films and testimonials to training and social media video. That's because the brief should decide the format rather than the other way round, and most people come to us with a problem before they've decided what kind of film would solve it.

We direct, film and edit our own projects, and the people around each shoot are chosen for the brief. Sound recordists, camera operators and gaffers come in as each one needs. Whoever's on the crew, the team you brief is the team that answers for the film.

Background

Andrew has been making films professionally for over a decade. The work has taken our crews into banking offices and onto school playing fields, across the UK and further afield.

The brand and commercial work includes films for LEGO, Pepsi, Diageo and Chelsea FC. The corporate work includes OakNorth, Dojo, ASK Partners, Rubicon Partners and Culford School, where each film needed us to understand what the organisation was really about before deciding how to film it. At Rubicon that meant chief executives and finance directors at four portfolio companies, filmed on their own ground in Liverpool, Essex, Leeds and Nottingham, saying in their own words what working with Rubicon is like.

Away from client work Andrew makes short films of his own. The Harvest, a short he directed, was recognised by the New York International Film Awards. That matters to us less as a credential and more as a sign that the films are landing with people who owe us nothing.

How we work

Every project starts the same way, with a thirty minute conversation about what the film needs to do. We talk about who's watching and what needs to change for them by the end, before anybody talks about how it should look.

The first conversation is free. After it comes a written proposal at a fixed price for the agreed scope, with revision rounds agreed before the shoot, then preproduction, the shoot, the edit and delivery in every format you need. There are no junior directors swapped in halfway through and no creative direction lost in account management, because the people in the first conversation stay with the film all the way to the edit.

Where we're based

A film made in London doesn't have to be priced like one. We're based in Woodbridge, on the River Deben, and we film in London all the time for firms like OakNorth, Dojo, ASK Partners and Rubicon Partners, without a London cost structure behind the day rate. Travel is built into the project cost from the start.

We work wherever a brief takes us across the UK. Travel is built into the project cost from the start, so it never turns up as a surprise on the final invoice.

Get in touch

Tell us the problem and we'll tell you straight whether a film will help. The first thirty minutes cost nothing, you don't need a brief, and sometimes the honest answer is that a film isn't what you need.