Westpac Female
Founders, 2026
how we captured the winners
the Female Founder Awards
The 2026 Westpac Female Founder Awards is a new initiative from Westpac, celebrating commercial success, innovation and community impact amongst the country’s top female entrepreneurs.
Our team was tasked with capturing the moment when five of these hard-working founders were revealed to be the first winners of these awards. In this article, you can hear about about our goals for capturing this exciting project, how our team set up the space to maximise recording potential, and some of the challenges that we overcame whilst shooting.
Our angle
The heart of this video was showcasing the reactions of the five winners: Emily Pyke from Undatech, Cassandra Spies from Twisted Healthy Treats, Leah Kaslar from Djookian, Jessica Armstrong from Fuka Skincare and Melisha Sirisena from Kid’s Hearing.
We employed a documentarian style that emphasised the real, candid reactions of the women and the representatives from Westpac.
We also wanted to ensure visual variety throughout the piece, making as much use of the space as we could. We captured the winners' stories across the photography backdrop, by the make-up chairs, in the green room and even outside the studio.
The Finer details
To achieve our goals, we assembled a set up that would cater to all our needs. We required a lot of video coverage with exemplary lighting and audio capture - yet had to share the space with a separate photography & Hair/Makeup Team.
Our set up included four cameras: Two mirrorless cameras alongside an Osmo Pocket for speed, and a 360 action camera for backup.
For audio we employed: Four lapel microphones for interviews and featured speakers, a shotgun mic for our winner’s couch and the internal microphone on the 360cam as backup.
Ensuring backups are in place is key for a shoot like this, after all, it’s impossible to recreate a genuine reaction after the fact.
Here’s a little floorplan we made when planning the shoot.
the results
After an exciting day on set, we headed to the post-production suite to review the results. The footage came together well, and alongside the Westpac team, we shaped a beautiful story sharing the genuine emotion and excitement of the day.
The post- process was not without its challenges however, as the acoustics of the room became strikingly apparent during footage review. After isolating the best audio captured on the day, we ran much of it through our restoration process which left it clean and crisp.
If you have a complex video that needs to be brought to life, reach out to us today! We’ll talk through the best solutions for your project, and deliver an outstanding product you’ll be proud to share.