My time at the British Transplant Games
Posted by Chris Doyle on 7th August 2019
Last month we travelled to the Westfield Health British Transplant Games in Newport, Wales, with our client the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA UK). In his latest blog, Chris shares his experience of the games.
The Westfield Health British Transplant Games are the flagship project of the charity Transport Sport and have been going for over 40 years. This year the event was held in Newport from 25th-28th July.
The PHA UK were sponsors of the Darts competition and our role involved gathering content, networking and capturing the event in words, images and on film. Having never watched the darts, or even visited Wales this was a completely new experience for me.
The PHA UK is the only charity in the UK dedicated to supporting people affected with pulmonary hypertension - a serious lung and heart disease affecting just 7,000 people in the UK. There is no cure and if patients don’t respond to treatment, they may undergo a lung and / or heart transplant.
We knew we had an important task to capture the competition but also talk to PHA UK members who were either participating or watching the games.
We set off from the PHA UK office in Sheffield on the Friday afternoon and after a long car journey, we finally arrived in Newport later that evening. I wasn’t sure what to expect but we arrived a few hours before the darts was due to start so had time to plan.
We were taken to the marquee where the competition would take place so we could scout out locations to film. We took the time to put up some PHA UK branded materials which had been designed by our associate designer including sponsorship banners, 180 score cards and beer mats.
The event started at 8.30pm and during the competition I was lucky to be able to capture shots of the crowd, referees and competitors in action. It was such a great atmosphere.
We had the opportunity to talk to PHA UK members who had come along to the event. It was great to film these moments and to get their reaction. I tried not to be too intrusive with the camera, and instead kept my distance and zoomed in to get their smiles and laughs so they felt more at ease.
There were a few mad rushes to capture certain shots and the big crowd presented challenges when moving around with the equipment, but from a filming perspective I think the event went well.
I love filming sports and capturing special moments of people coming together. All in all, the British Transplant Games was great and I’m really looking forward to filming at the World Transplant Games in Newcastle later this month where the PHA UK will sponsor Petanque – a ball game like boules.
Watch the full video of the British Transplant Games.
